MacGyvering: Difference between revisions

** 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.

** One of his most elaborate escapes went as follows: First he waited for the warden to go on vacation; then he secretly sabotaged the printing press in the prison workshop. Next he offered to fix it - this is why he waited, he knew the temp warden would be less suspicious of him than the regular one. He then proceeded to turn the press into an ''armored tank'' that he used to smash his way out.

* 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.