Leatherface - Original Series

Original Series

The original film never showed Leatherface without one of his human-hide faces on. Leatherface used to work as the cow-killer at the meat factory. Gunnar Hansen, who portrayed Leatherface in the original 1974 film, sees Leatherface as "completely under the control of his family. He'll do whatever they tell him to do. He's a little bit afraid of them." In the documentary The Shocking Truth, Tobe Hooper portrays Leatherface as a "big baby" who kills in self-defense because he feels threatened. In the first film, Leatherface shows fear when new people enter his home.

Leatherface's family uses the bones of the people he kills (along with some animal bones) to build the inside of their house. They process the victims' flesh into barbecue and chili, which Drayton Sawyer, a skilled chef, sells at his restaurant/gas station, the "Last Chance" gas station. They also enter human-flesh dishes at cook-offs (according to the sequel, Drayton has won two cooking awards doing this). Aside from Leatherface and Drayton, the Sawyer clan includes several more brothers, a hitchhiker named Nubbins Sawyer, Nubbins' twin brother, a Vietnam vet known as Chop Top or Plate Head, a hitchhiking cowboy named Eddie/Tex, a hook-handed man named Tech/Tinker, a deranged pervert named Alfredo/Fred, a tow-truck driver named Vilmer and a redneck know-it-all named W.E. Apart from the brothers, the Sawyer clan includes the supercentenarian Grandpa, the dead Grandma/Great-Grandma Sawyer (whose corpse has been preserved), a wheelchair-bound mother called Mama and Leatherface's daughter (first names unknown).

In the first film, siblings, Sally and Franklin Hardesty go out with their friends to investigate their grandfathers grave robbing. They run afowl of Nubbins and eventually the rest of the Sawyer family and Leatherface kills off their friends and Frankin. Sally is kept alive and manages to make a run for it, with Leatherface and Nubbins in pursuit. Sally manages to get a passing truck to stop, running over Nubbins and the panicing trucker throws a wrench at Leatherface, causing him to get injured in his leg. Sally makes another run for it, and manages to escape Leatherface on a pickup truck.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a direct sequel to the 1974 film, featured a more campy and over-the-top atmosphere than the original. Tobe Hooper stated on The Shocking Truth that he wanted to expand on the dark comedy in the original film, as he felt no one truly picked up on this element. In this film, the Hitchhiker is replaced by his hippy twin brother Chop Top (who transforms his dead twin's corpse into a puppet), the cook, Drayton, has become an award-winning chef. Leatherface develops a "crush" on one of his victims, and in one scene, removes the skin from the face of her still-living friend and places it on her to hide her from the rest of his family. At the end of the film, he apparently dies in an explosion after being impaled with a chainsaw in a fight with the uncle of his previous victims from the first film. Leatherface's clan's last name is also revealed in the film when brother Drayton wins a local cook-off, their family name being Sawyer.

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, became the second sequel in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series. The film was made as a reboot and a sequel, so the audience could interpret it as a direct sequel or as an alternative sequel in a different continuity of the previous two films, though several references are made to the previous two films, including Leatherface having a knee brace from his chainsaw accident at the climax of the first film, brother Alfredo owning a gas station and truck labeled "Last Chance Gas", the family's last name remaining Sawyer from the previous film and the inclusion of several characters from both earlier films. The filmmakers attempted to make the series darker and grittier (much as the film-makers of the original had intended), but they had to tone it down and change the ending after interventions from the MPAA. New Line released an uncut version to the home-video market in 2003. In this film Leatherface has an extended family and a daughter - possibly the product of a rape. A four-issue comic series based on the film, entitled Leatherface, was created; notably, portions of the comics are narrated by and shown from Leatherface's point of view. Note that horror actor Kane Hodder choreographed the stunts and played the stunt-double Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation apparently takes place in its own continuity; its prologue describes the second and third films as "two minor, yet apparently related incidents". The film features Leatherface as a yelping, pizza-eating transvestite involved in an Illuminati conspiracy to provide society a source of horror, and, again, with a different family.