gift of life that he had just been denied. He approached a man named William Easton for money for an experimental cancer treatment, but was denied. Flashbacks from Saw II show that, after surviving a suicide attempt where he drove his car off a cliff, John was "reborn", and nurtured the idea that the only way for someone to change is for them to change themselves. Then, in Saw IV flashbacks, he designed the first trap and test for Cecil, and decided to use the rest of his existence to design more of these "tests" or "games" as a form of "instant rehabilitation" that would change the world "one person at a time". John was soon given the nickname "The Jigsaw Killer" (or "Jigsaw"), because he removed a puzzle-piece-shaped chunk of flesh from those who did not escape his traps. John stated that this name was given to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh represented that the victims were missing what he called the "survival instinct". Few of John's victims can survive his brutal mechanical traps, which are often ironically symbolic representations of problems in the victim's life and require them to undergo severe physical and/or psychological torture to escape. Jigsaw depicts one of John's very first games, which never became public. The only survivor is Logan Nelson, the man who accidentally mislabeled John's x-rays, causing his cancer to go undiagnosed until it was too late. Believing Logan should not die over an honest mistake, John saves him before he is killed by one of the traps, and recruits him as his first apprentice. Logan helps John build several traps for future games, but eventually enlists in the U.S. Army and leaves to fight in the Iraq War. In Saw V, police lieutenant Mark Hoffman's ties with John are revealed in a series of flashbacks. During John's first years of activity, Hoffman's sister was murdered by her boyfriend, Seth Baxter. Seth is sentenced to life imprisonment; however, a technicality allows him to go free after only five years. Hoffman then kills him in an inescapable trap designed to resemble a Jigsaw trap; everyone then believes that Jigsaw was behind the killing. John then kidnaps Hoffman and blackmails him into becoming his apprentice in his "rehabilitation" methods. Though initially forced to help, Hoffman later becomes a willing apprentice, and helps set up most of John's tests.