MacGyvering: Difference between revisions

*** This is somewhat subverted in that it took 4 years for Setsuna to show himself and in this case, it was less of a case of MacGyvering and more of a case of scrounging for parts that he needed. The replacement Camera eye was probably dug out of a Tieran while a lot of the missing pieces of armor may attribute to him breaking them down for spare parts. This is less of a case of MacGyvering and more of a case of replacing a broken car tire with a sturdier but smaller tire.

* Yusei from ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'', in episode 88, disarmed a high tech battle royal collar with a nail.

 

 

* [[Lex Luthor]], on the other hand, ''has'' been known to build a teleporter out out of stuff lying around his cell. During his appearance in the short-lived ''The Joker'' comic, he improvised a jetpack out of a couple of bottles of pop and some paint flakes.

** Spectacular jailbreaks based on his MacGyvering skills were a huge part of [[Pre Crisis]] [[Mad Scientist]] Luthor's character. One story has him consider that it has reached the point where his guards won't allow him to have ''anything'' other than a pad of paper and a pen. He knows perfectly well how to turn to the ink, metal, plastic, wood pulp, and glue into a high explosive to blast his way out... but he would never ''do'' that, because then they wouldn't let him have a pen and paper any more.

* Mocked, inevitably, in [[Mad Magazine|Mad's]] spoof of [[MacGyver]]. MacGyver remarks the [[Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard|the room the bad guys have locked him in]] has nothing he can use to escape, to which the woman with him points out that the room is full of explosives. He complains about the indignity of having to actually use explosives as explosives instead of improvising.

* ''[[Tintin]]'' tends to resort to this after being kidnapped by the villain-of-the-week. Interestingly, while they're still ingenious a lot of his inventions are surprisingly plausible.

* ''[[Batman]]'', of course, has pulled this off several times, usually on those rare instances where he is without his utility belt.

 

* In ''[[My Stupid Reality]]'' [[Death Note|Light]] modifies a cheap laptop to work better with pieces ripped out of L's refrigerator.

** [[Truth in Television|Somewhat grounded in reality,]] believe it or not; the heat-exchanger from a fridge would be powerful enough to counteract a hell of a lot of overclocking.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Another video game example would be any of the ''[[Monkey Island]]'' games where Guybrush Threepwood has to use all manner of wacky items to save the day {{spoiler|One is in ''Curse of Monkey Island'', where you have to pour cooking oil on a guy's back so he'll get sun burnt and you can then peel off the skin on his back which just happens to have a map tattooed on to it}}.

* In ''[[Fallout]] 3'', you can do things like make a gauntlet out of a monster's arm and a medical brace, make a nail-launching rifle out of a steam gauge assembly and a pressure cooker, or make a ''[[Flaming Sword]]'' out of ''motorcycle parts and a lawnmower blade''.

* In [[Fallout: New Vegas]], when faced with a broken world item (fuse box, food processor...), you can either: go hunt for parts or use a high repair skill to fix it. Special mention for the food processor at Camp Mac Carran, which you can fix with a repair skill of 80 by using a paper clip, a swiss army knife and other stuff.

** Even that example is outdone by the Jury Rigging perk, which enables you to, among other things: repair a [[Power Fist]] with [[Joke Item|boxing gloves]], repair an [[Techno Babble|Inversal Proton Axe]] with a pool cue, and fix an [[Techno Babble|Atomic Tri-Calence Radii Accentuator]] with a pair of sunglasses.

** Othar wrote in his log about [http://twitter.com/Othar/status/1317066710 some] [http://twitter.com/Othar/status/1376637973 hardware] he built after being marooned.

* A parody on ''[[Ansem Retort]]'': Zexion made a new heart for Riku out of bendy straws and a Hot Pocket.

* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' space criminal Fructose Riboflavin has a knack for building alien [[Applied Phlebotinum|supertech]] out of odds and ends. Useful, since he spends so much of his life as a perpetual fugitive.

* Parodied numerous times in [[Real Life Comics]] - among other things, Tony has made a [http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/000302.html quantum space-time teleportation device] and a [http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/021017.html trans-dimensional portal device] out of random materials lying around.

* One instance of possible Mac Gyvering is found in the webcomic [[Ctrl+Alt+Del|Control-Alt-Delete]], where the main character, Ethan, makes a bipedal, sentient robot out of a single [[Xbox]]. This robot then develops a taste for gaming and becomes another character in the comic.

* Jenny 10 from ''[[Dex Hamilton Alien Entomologist]]'': "Last week I made a hadron collider from a broken hairdryer and a box of paperclips..."

* Played with on ''[[G.I. Joe: Renegades]]''. Being fugitives on the run, it's a given. Duke manages to diffuse a bomb with a wad of chewing gum, but Roadblock's attempts to jury-rig an engine-cable for the truck don't go as smoothly.

* On ''[[Beast Wars]]'', [[The Smart Guy|Rhinox]] often had to improvise with whatever spare parts were available to build new useful tech. [[Lampshaded]] in "Chain of Command":

{{quote|"Make a device to extract physical molecular structure from an alien probe? Man, I gotta be a miracle worker."}}

* ''[[My Little Pony]]'': In "The Return Of Tambelon", the ponies are able to break out of Grogan's dungeon by using their gruel ration and Fizzy's bubble-making magic to turn a crack in the ceiling into a gaping hole that they can escape through.

* ''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]'': In "James and the Coaches", James' rough riding causes the brake pipe on one of his coaches to rupture, bringing the train to a standstill. The crew covers the hole with newspaper and pressures a reluctant passenger to hand over his leather bootlaces to seal it up. It works.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

 

* Brazil and Portugal are two nations whose whole philosophy is based on improvisation, and this is taught in schools. They even [http://www.cracked.com/article_17251_p2.html have a word for it]: ''desenrascanço''.

** That term is probably exclusive to Portugal. In Brazil, the improv way of life is usually called "Jeitinho Brasileiro", or "Brazilian (Little) Way", which is not limited to MacGyvering, but also any sort of problem-solving in non-conventional ways, including amoral ones.

** French call that ''système D''. A convenient way to do things without any annoying organisation.

* In a similar vein, the Egyptians have a [[National Stereotypes|stereotype]] about themselves that they can always find a way to make what they need. As it turns out, this might be true of Arabs in general, judging by the jury-rigged weapons systems of Hamas and Hezbollah in the [[Useful Notes/Arab-Israeli Conflict|Arab Israeli Conflict]], and of the Libyan rebels in [[Middle East Uprising 2011|their Civil War]].

* The Israelis during the time of the British Mandate were themselves pretty good at that sort of thing.

* Cracked did an article on the subject, [http://www.cracked.com/article_16151_5-most-amazing-real-life-macgyver-moments.html here.]

* I know it's on the Cracked list, but it deserves its own line. The Apollo 13 astronauts found themselves with square air scrubbers and round air scrubber holes. The solution they cooked up was made out of a plastic bag, a hose, a sock, and, of course, some [[Duct Tape for Everything|Duct Tape]].

** Although, in fairness, they did call [[Mission Control|for backup]].

* During the [[American Civil War]], the South was strapped for cash and couldn't stand a protracted naval blockade, especially with the North's greater resources for building ironcalds. Considering that the South's main resource was cotton, they strapped bales onto the decks of merchant ships and used them to absorb enemy fire. Thus, the [[wikipedia:Cotton-clad|Cotton-clad]] was born.

* Americans are known for coming up with crazy ideas that just happen to work like using human hair to soak up oil. At the Battle of Midway, the carrier ''Yorktown'' had been redeployed after improvised repairs were rushed after taking heavy damage at Coral Sea. The ''Yorktown'' was bombed by Zeroes, but the Damage Control units not only kept her afloat, but got her back up to speed, to the point that when the Japanese bombed her again, they thought they had sunk two carriers, rather than hitting the ''Yorktown'' twice. She did sink, but not before turning the tide of the battle by means of improvised repairs and sheer endurance.

* In the wake of the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, basically everyone and their uncle came up with an idea to either A) get the oil from the water, B) fix the gushing oil pipe or C) clean the oil off the poor helpless animals. Almost all these ideas (well, maybe not the "stop the gushing pipe" one) usually involved simple materials that could be found in either the average home, the average High School, or the average supermarket. And most of them either ''worked'' or ''would have worked'', although not on a Gulf-wide scale.

* The phrases "Yankee ingenuity" and "Kiwi ingenuity" refer to the tendencies of early colonists in, respectively, [[Hollywood New England|New England]] and [[New Zealand]] to make do with whatever was available in order to perform the task at hand, such as using a pole saw to cut brush in the absence of a machete.