MacGuffin: Difference between revisions

* [[MacGuffin Delivery Service]]: The good guys get the '''MacGuffin''', just in time for the bad guys to steal it from them. Bad guys win! (Temporarily.)

* [[MacGuffin Escort Mission]]: The good guys get the '''MacGuffin''' early on. The rest of the story is about them transporting it somewhere else without losing it.

* [[MacGuffin Guardian]]: The monster that guards the MacGuffin.

* [[MacGuffin Location]]: The '''MacGuffin''' isn't a thing or a person, it's a place.

 

{{examples}}

 

* The Imperial Seal and the Dragon Jade from ''[[Ikki Tousen]]''.

* Every single episode of ''[[GetBackers]]'' revolves around one of these. Somewhat [[Justified Trope|justified]], as the characters retrieve, transport, protect, etc. things for a living.

* The demon tool Brew in ''[[Soul Eater]]''. Originally sought out by Shibusen for no clear purpose other than to avoid the other guys getting their hands on it, it was used as a bargaining chip by Medusa. She tricked Arachne into thinking she had the real thing, and gave Brew itself to Shinigami in exchange for information and a deal to bring down Arachnaphobia. The one occasion the MacGuffin tool itself does something significant, is in a Chekov's Gun-like moment during the Baba Yaga arc. Its [[Amplifier Artifact|soul amplification]] ability saves Death the Kid's life. And his left arm. Now placed in Noah's book, it may well turn up again to...be passed around by the cast once more.

* In a sidestory in the ''[[Fruits Basket]]'' manga, Akito's mother, Ren, and Akito manipulate various people in their family over the posession of a box left behind by Akito's father, Akira. When the box is opened, {{spoiler|it's empty. Akito's caretakers said Akira's soul was in the box, but Akito had long since stopped believing that and just used the mystery surrounding the box to jerk Ren around.}}

* The Dokuro Stones from ''[[Yatterman]]'' would definitely apply.

* The Eto Gun from ''[[Et Cetera]]''. Very nearly ''everyone'' Ming Chao meets is after it.

* Protoculture from ''[[Robotech]]''. It's the mysterious energy source that drives Robotechnology. But in terms of storytelling, it exists mostly to tie together the three component anime series ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'', ''[[Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross]]'', and ''[[Genesis Climber Mospeada]]''. in the original series, all the mecha and ships were powered by your run of the mill nuclear fusion.

 

* ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]]'' has "The Winslow", a furry alligator-like talking creature that "[https://web.archive.org/web/20150428210107/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20080322 figures in easily three quarters of the Galaxy's known religions]"... in every possible role. So, naturally, the moment its location is revealed, just about every alien race gets into a holy war at the same time. The Winslow's purpose is to be a [[Shaped Like Itself]] MacGuffin. A secondary purpose and/or effect of its primary purpose is to confuse the hell out of everyone. Uligb are among the few who also ascribe to The Winslow great importance, but [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428210012/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20080626 realize] that the farther you keep from such things, the healthier you are likely to remain. Of course, they [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428210022/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20080610 also] [[Starfish Aliens|perceive thirteen and half dimensions]]... and like popsicles.

* In an issue of ''[[Jon Sable Freelance]]'', Jon is hired to retrieve a stolen formula (codenamed 7X) in a sealed envelope, with strict instructions that the envelope is not to be opened. Jon succeeds and returns the formula to its owners. Although he didn't open the envelope, he comments that when it got wet the envelope went transparent and he could read the list of ingredients and there isn't anything there that cannot be bought at a corner drug store. The executives comment that the point is that no one else knows that and burn the envelope. 7X turns out to be {{spoiler|the formula for Coca-Cola}}.

* The Arumbayan statue in ''[[Tintin|The Broken Ear]]'' (the [[Real Life]] artifact Herge based it on belongs to the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels).

* The lump of bombastium in [[Carl Barks]]'s "A Cold Bargain": an [[Idiot Ball]] and MacGuffin rolled into one, made of pure [[Unobtainium]]. No-one knows what it does, but since it's so rare that the substance isn't found anywhere else outside that one lump, and because they don't actually know it ''doesn't'' do something amazing, everyone wants it. Scrooge McDuck bids an enormous sum on it on impulse and then has to go to great lengths to maintain the possibly useless lump's existence. {{spoiler|In the end, it turns out it can be used to make loads and loads of ice cream, which does make the deal profitable.}}

* In the second issue of the [[Sonic X (comics)|comic book adaptation]] of ''[[Sonic X]]'', Sonic and friends investigate a sunken ship owned by the long-dead pirate "Captain Seamus "Red-Eye" MacGuffin", and later outright call the ship "The MacGuffin". Subtle, it is not.

* ''[[PS238]]'' has an [[In-Universe]] term for those: "[[Fun with Acronyms|OOPS]]" ([http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2017-08-04/ Object of Overwhelming Power and Significance]).

 

* The quintessential MacGuffin is ''[[The Maltese Falcon]]''. It gets the characters together, pits them against each other, but turns out to be worthless.

* "The Rembrandt Letters" in ''[[The Silver Streak]]''.

* Three ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]'' movies have these. They are the ATAC transmitter from ''[[For Your Eyes Only (film)|For Your Eyes Only]]'' and, to a lesser extent, the GPS encoder from ''[[Tomorrow Never Dies]]''. There's also the Lector Encoder in ''[[From Russia with Love]]'', which only exists to get James Bond to Istanbul.

** ''[[For Your Eyes Only (film)|For Your Eyes Only]]'' was also the former [[Trope Namer]] of [[No MacGuffin, No Winner]] ([[The Trope Formerly Known as X|the trope formerly known as]] [[Detente Comrade]]).

* The jailbreak in ''Down By Law''. We never find out how they got out, and it doesn't matter, because the movie is more concerned with the relationships between the characters (see also [[Noodle Implements]]).

* Nuclear testing in ''[[Beginning of the End]]'', ''Earth vs. The Spider'', ''The Deadly Mantis'', and many other monster movies. The bomb's only purpose is to create monsters. Movies like ''[[Them]]'' and ''[[Godzilla]]'' don't count, though, because they really are about the bomb.

* The papers in ''[[Mystery Team]]''.

* The Ford [[GT 40]] in ''[[The Fast and the Furious|Fast Five]]''. Also doubles as a [[Cool Car]].

 

 

* [[The Dark Tower]] itself is one.

* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''Black Widower'' mystery stories have the out of print books in "Sunset on the Water", a lucky coin in "The Lucky Piece", and the data in "The Alibi". The data is a somewhat lampshaded MacGuffin, as the government agent telling the story points out that the details are unimportant, but still secret.

* Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's vast fortune in ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'' is said to ''exist'', but even the narrator casts aspersions as to how much money he really has, if any. The sons' owed inheritance is the MacGuffin which gets the plot moving in the beginning, but it is only brought up past the middle of the book in passing. The argument could also be made that the sub-plot involving the schoolboys, which is almost entirely unrelated to the main events of the novel, is a MacGuffin to explore some other themes of spirituality.

* [[Anthony Horowitz]] parodied ''[[The Maltese Falcon]]'' and ''[[North by Northwest]]'', the second and third books in his ''[[Diamond Brothers]]'' series, ''The Falcon's Maltesers'' and ''South by South East'', the latter of which had the plot kicked off by a character called MacGuffin.

* In ''The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse'' by [[Robert Rankin]], the main characters find and use a vital object called 'The Maguffin'.

* ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' features a mysterious sugar bowl (a.k.a. the [[Arc Words|Vessel For Disaccharides]]) that everyone is looking for. In the last volume, {{spoiler|they don't find it. It is implied to possibly contain horseradish, which is a cure for [[The Plague|Medusoid Mycellium]] }}.

* In [[Mikhail Akhmanov]]'s ''Earth Shadow'', Dick Simon is sent by the civilized worlds to find out the fate of [[Earth-That-Was]], which was cut off from the [[Portal Network]] at the end of the Exodus. He spends most of the novel looking for the ''Poltava'', a top-of-the-line naval triplehulled cruiser, built shortly before the Exodus. He needs the ship's missiles to destroy a Lunar base that is the cause of the portal interference. He finally finds the derelict ship in a grotto under a mountain. Unfortunately, the missiles have all been used up. He ends up using a completely different (and easier) method of shutting down the transmitter. Had be done that from the start, the book would've been only ten pages long.

* The Saghred in Lisa Shearin's fantasy series: an evil stone of cataclysmic power accidentally bonded to the main character. Everyone is after it, but Raine just wants to get rid of it. Also an [[Artifact of Doom]] and a [[Clingy MacGuffin]].

* The painting "Moscow Asylum" in David Madsen's ''USSA'', for a while. The protagonist wants to find because it's valuable to the artist, and he wants some information from the artist. A bunch of goons who steal it from him only do so because they assume it has some more intrinsic value to case he working on.

* The titular Hallows from Harry Potter's seventh book are an in-universe [[McGuffin]], but the wand gets special mention as it became the reason Harry managed to actually beat Voldemort, if Voldemort had disregarded it and used a random wand from one of his victims he would've won.

* The Ghost Fleet in ''Startide Rising'' plays no larger role than to sic the whole galaxy on one damaged spaceship full of dolphins. Everyone, and I mean ''everyone'' wants to know where it is.

* In [[Michael Flynn]]'s ''[[Spiral Arm|The January Dancer]]'', the harper claims that the object of [[The Quest]] is not important; what mattered was Jason and Medea, not the Golden Fleece. The scarred man objects: had he gone after the Tin Whistle or the Aluminum Coffeepot, the failure would have been different.

{{quote|''We'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.''}}

 

* Arguably, the entirety of "[[Lost]]" is an exercise in MacGuffin spotting.

* Done to the point of extreme irritation in ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' as it's obvious by the end of season two that the writers can't come up with a satisfactory explanation for the prophet Rambaldi but are still going to drag out one tired MacGuffin for the rest of the series.

* ''[[Power Rangers]]'': The [[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers|Mighty Morphin]] era includes a sword to transfer the powers of the original Red, Yellow & Black Rangers to their replacements(Future power transfers with later powers just featured the powers being handed over).

** The Zeo Crystal subverts this as it was introduced in a 3 parter prior to the storyline in which the Rangers sought it out. Furthermore, [[Power Rangers Zeo]] would see the Crystal as the source of the Rangers' new powers.

** As far as the utility and importance of the matchbook, it's got the names and addresses of every dealer and operator on the west side; he who holds the matchbook has power over all of them, a cut of their profits, etc.

* The Prize for being the last Immortal standing in ''[[Highlander (TV series)|Highlander]]''.

* Season 2 of ''[[Prison Break]]'' has the characters chasing a MacGuffin all season: Charles Westmoreland's money. It briefly ends up in the hands of T-Bag and Bellick, but aside from an insignificant amount being spent, it only serves to move the plot along. Many things happen because of it, but it ends up as nobody's prize.

** Season 4 also has a MacGuffin in the form of Scylla, the company's "Little Black Book." The first half of the season has the team chasing the [[Plot Coupon]] known as "cards" to unlock Scylla, but then it's stolen and everyone spends the rest of the season chasing it. Somewhere late in S4 Michael figures out that Scylla actually contains the secret to super-efficient solar power (or something), but it really doesn't matter to the plot. The point is that if they get Scylla, they can destroy The Company, and if they don't, they all go back to prison.

* An unaired episode of ''[[Dinosaurs]]'', "Scent of a Reptile", revolves around Charlene getting her "scent", which will attract one male dinosaur and one male only, who will be her mate for life. When she realises that her destined mate is a slobbish janitor, her grandmother tells her the only way to change her scent is with a very rare flower found on the other side of the world - the MacGuffin Lily.

* The ''[[Good Eats]]'' episode "Behind the Bird" was created and narrated by one-off character Blair McGuffin.

It seems that every fifth episode of Stargate: SG-1 involved chasing some alien technology MacGuffin that is never seen or heard of again.

 

* The [[Golden Fleece]] in the story of Jason and the Argonauts: It's an alternate name for a MacGuffin.

** The Fleece was actually full of [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|gold]], on behalf of being used repeatedly to filter water from a river containing gold dust. Worth its weight in gold, in other words.

* The Holy Grail. Much of Arthurian legend concerns different knights' quests for the grail, but once the grail is found, the court of Arthur has nothing better to do and is left to disintegrate. It has in fact first been mentioned in a novel about the Arthurian legend.

 

* [[The Bible|Samson]] had two. One was the answer to his riddle. The other was the source of his strength. Both were tricked out of him by his wives of the time.

 

* The ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' adventure "The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues". The title Black Box. What it does is eventually revealed, in some versions of the adventure, but it's unlikely your player characters will live long enough to discover it.

 

* In ''[[Philoctetes]]'', while much is made of Philoctetes' special bow (received from Herakles himself) the plot itself is not really concerned with its purpose as much as the choices the characters make because of and in spite of its importance.

 

* Every single ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' game involves Lara on a quest to collect some kind of artifact, except for Unfinished Business.

** This trope is sort of subverted in ''Tomb Raider Legend'' when the MacGuffin is the legendary sword Excalibur, which Lara uses as a weapon in the final boss fight.

** the first part isn't entirely true, snake was explictly told what was on it when he was given the thing in the first place (all of the test data collected from Metal Gear REX's first practical real-world operations test), and no one else (save ocelot) knew he had it until snake was captured, which kinda disqualifies it for macguffin status.

* ''Crysis Warhead'', the entire game is chasing a MacGuffin. [[Stuff Blowing Up|But with more explosions]].

** It's...the heart of all worlds. Xemnas and Ansem just exploit phenomena that cause doorways to it to physically manifest.

* In ''[[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge]]'', Guybrush Threepwood begins his quest to find the "Big Whoop", a legendary treasure known and craved by all pirates, even when no one knows what it is.

* Averted with ''[[The Secret of Monkey Island]]'' itself. Although mentioned frequently across the series, and the name of the first game, the task of finding it is never used to drive the plot. Guybrush does find it accidentally in the fourth game, but it happens so randomly that the player would never know they found the Secret, if it weren't for the FMV movie named such. The creator of the series still says that he never told anyone what the ''real'' secret is, and that he might do a final game to wrap up the series. There are hints that the secret will be that the game events aren't real (i.e., Guybrush is [[All Just a Dream|dreaming]] or is an in-universe fictional character), but it doesn't actually come up.

* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' has the Bronze Sphere as its primary MacGuffin. {{spoiler|It becomes a [[Chekhov's Gun]] if you take it with you throughout the whole game and deduce the identity of the Good Incarnation.}}

* The quests, especially open-world leveling quests, in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' fall into a small number of broad categories, the most common being 1) Talk to someone, 2) Kill something (or X number of somethings), and 3) Collect something. The Collect-something quests involve MacGuffins. The majority of players don't bother to read quest text in detail; they just check it for the name of the MacGuffin(s) they need to collect this time.

* The resonator from ''[[Gears of War]]'' is an item that supposedly can help deliver a final strike against the Locus Horde by mapping out their tunnels. Midway through the game they activate it, thinking their job is done, only to realize that the resonator didn't do what it was supposed to do. They had to go onto something else to get a map of their tunnels.

* ''[[Spyro the Dragon|Spyro]]'' games work off of this formula. In the first game, you unfreeze dragons. In the second, you collect orbs (which is an aversion, due to their usage in the final battle) and talismans. In the third, you collect dragon eggs. You collect gems in all of them. Et al.

* The title giving substance of the game ''Chrome'', it's never explained what exactly chrome is, what it does, what it's used for and why exactly it's so valuable, all that's said is that it's of high importance to the plot. In fact [[The Un-Reveal|you never even get to see it in the game]].

* Freespace 2 features the GTVA Colossus, the [[Awesome but Practical|largest ship ever built]]. Once deployed, it is treated as a victory condition for any engagement it participates in. The second the Colossus shows up, the enemy either retreats or is destroyed by its beam cannons and fighter compliment, regardless of the enemy fleet's actual strength.

* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'' has a Moonstone meteor crash into Shrine Island near the heroes' home of Pirate Isle. Vyse and Aika go ahead and retreive it, but its real purprose is have them off the island so that [[The Empire|Valua]] can turn it into a [[Doomed Hometown]]. The Raw Moonstone stays in the inventory for the entire game, but is never used despite being a potential feul source.

* The war plans from the original ''[[Castle Wolfenstein]]''. You need to find them while escaping from the castle, but they have no other effect in the game.

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' police radio missions have dozens of MacGuffins. In the spirit of the trope, exactly which of them is involved in a particular mission is inconsequential; the mission boils down to "Villain group X has MacGuffin Y. Get it back." Sadly, there's not a literal MacGuffin among them, but there is a [[Plot Device|P.L.O.T. Device]].

* In ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', the [[Green Rocks|Chaos Emeralds]] are almost always the reason anybody does anything at all. In the comics, somebody's always after them. In the games, they aren't always necessary to the plot itself, but regardless, you always need them to get the 'Good' ending.

* ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' Act II has a straightforward MacGuffin; the Qunari "artifact". But the overarching MacGuffin is obscured, it's never an objective for the main characters, yet it impacts the plot more significantly: the lyrium idol.

* The Key of Twilight is a mysterious item told of in legend in every iteration of [[.hack|The World]] and is the original goal of every group of protagonists. In the Epitaph of Twilight, the Key was required to rouse the Twilight Dragon to fight the Cursed Wave, but the Epitaph was never completed; in series, the Key is considered merely considered to be an item of immense power that can change the rules of the game itself. No one definite thing that could be called the "Key of Twilight" is ever really featured and its recovery tends to go forgotten as its search reveals even greater calamity on the horizon.

* The onklunk in ''[[Leisure Suit Larry]] Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places)''. It has a piece of microfiche inside which has no real relevance to the game other than a bunch of [[Dirty Commies]] who will stop at nothing to get it.

* Jiggies are the MacGuffin of the Banjo-Kazooie games. (Except that the Jiggies do open other worlds in the game, making them essential in rescuing Tootie who could be an example of a Living Macguffin...)

 

== [[Visual Novels]] ==

* Mary's eye in ''[[Shikkoku no Sharnoth]]''. We know what the eye does for ''her'' but exactly how it would really help anyone else who acquired it is pretty vague. They simply want it.

 

* Marsh Rocket features a ''[[Pulp Fiction]]''-style suitcase that drives the plot. It is revealed to contain {{spoiler|tax papers for the IRS}}.

* In ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'', the original Danielle has disks with all the important data for "Rabbit's Revenge", an underground group with terroristic tendencies. The disks are shown in the June 21, 2003, strip, labeled "McGuffin disks".

* In ''[http://www.absurdnotions.org/page1.html Absurd Notions]'', The Legendary Rock of Rama Lama is initially a MacGuffin (illustrated by [http://www.absurdnotions.org/page49.html Warren's remark]), but ceases to be that when the players refuse to accept that.

* Ancient sacred relic #7 in ''[[Hellbound]]''.

* Parodied in ''[[Megatokyo]]''. Early on, Largo blows all his cash on a mysterious "cool thing". The exact extent of its abilities is never revealed, but it apparently at least has the power to call forth a legion of cardboard robots Largo created. Also joked about in one of the books, where author Piro comments that even he doesn't know what it does, and "Shirt Guy" Dom comments that the instant they figure it out, it'll be sold at the site's store within two weeks.

* [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[A Girl and Her Fed]]'', though here's to hoping that they're not what we'd traditionally call a MacGuffin, as they had better explain some things. [http://www.agirlandherfed.com/1.657.html Unless this is a hint from the writer that they won't...]

{{quote|Girl: Damn, we're juggling a load of MacGuffins. And I've heard MacGuffins are insanely high in calories... Get it? Muffin? MacGuffin?"}}

* In ''[[Endstone]]'''s Backstory [https://web.archive.org/web/20120702032056/http://endstone.net/2010/09/30/4-28/ the Endstone was this to Jon at first -- he wanted it only as bait.]

{{quote|Alice: Surprise! I was paying attention! Now let's go get that [[horcrux]]

Poe: Julia.

* ''[[Troops of Doom]]'' has [[Built With Lego|Legotech]], a mysterious technology that runs on [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]].

 

* The Project Orwell software in series 1 of ''[[Kate Modern]]'', which is mysteriously absent from the second series.

* [[The Nostalgia Chick]] has a jar of mayonnaise that has been transformed into one by [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Lord MacGuffin]].

 

* Every other Uncle Scrooge Comic Story, and to a lesser extent, ''[[DuckTales (1987)]]'', is essentially a search for a historical MacGuffin. It matters not whether the already-ultra-rich McDuck searches for the Golden Fleece, Solomon's Mines, the remnants of the Trojan Horse, the Crown of the Crusader Kings, the Candy-Striped Ruby etc. so much as it's something valuable for both him and Glomgold to get involved.

** [[Don Rosa]]'s life stories of Scrooge McDuck make this even more explicit by detailing his adventures around in search of wealth, and the sharp downturn after he could just lie back and manage it. The treasures he's now seeking are less important than the ability to zoom halfway across the planet to do it.

* The Golden Disk in ''[[Transformers]]: [[Beast Wars]]'' started as a MacGuffin... but in the second season, it evolved out of that status, with Megatron demonstrating exactly what it was and why it was so dangerous in his hands.

* The Anti-Life Equation in the [[Diniverse]]. Several villains, most notably Darkseid, want it, and the chase for it is a recurring plot point. The equation itself, on the other hand, is not: What it does remains undefined and the two who finally get their hands on it promptly vanish from this reality. (The comic book version, on the other hand, does define the Equation, and some of those seeking it have been able to use it. {{spoiler|It's an empirical scientific formula which demonstrates the meaninglessness and futility of existence, which allows one to control the will of others entirely. Its ominous name comes from the idea that "if someone possesses absolute control over you - you're not really alive." Scott "Mr. Miracle" Free has known the Equation all along but chooses not to use it.}})

* The titular ''[[The Black Cauldron|Black Cauldron]]'' In the book, on the other hand, the Cauldron was very much its own thing. Hen Wen, on the other hand, served to be chased and clashed over until finally doing something in the final book.

* In an ''[[American Idol]]'' parody episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', the prize winner gets to star in their own "Itchy and Scratchy" episode. After that, it is never brought up again in the episode.