MacGuffin: Encyclopedia II - MacGuffin - Other examples

MacGuffin - Other examples

MacGuffin - Film

• One particularly famous early movie example of a MacGuffin is the titular statuette in The Maltese Falcon.
• Roger Ebert defines the term in his commentary track for Casablanca, where he points out that the "letters of transit"[2] in the film are a MacGuffin.
• Roman Polanski's 1974 neo-noir classic, Chinatown uses a MacGuffin in the form of the fake Mrs. Mulwray who drives the plot but ultimately bears little influence in the grand scheme of things.
• A similar homage is the surreal, glowing car trunk in Repo Man.
• The briefcase in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is a MacGuffin. The contents are never shown; that section of the plot is not about the briefcase so much as what happens because of it. When the briefcase is briefly opened, we do not see its contents, only a yellow glow coming from the case; this is probably itself a homage to the glowing car trunk in Repo Man, or to the mysterious attaché case (containing "The Great Whatsit") in Kiss Me Deadly.
• The 1979 children's movie The Double McGuffin has two MacGuffins.
• In the film Ronin, the ice-skate carrying case is also a classic MacGuffin.
• In the film Diva, the MacGuffin is a cassette tape.
• In the James Bond movie From Russia With Love, the MacGuffin is the Lektor device which everyone seems interested in getting but is otherwise irrelevant to the plot as it never really does anything and could have been easily replaced with a variety of other things.
• In the movie Barton Fink, Barton is given a box to hold on to by John Goodman's character but the contents of the box are never revealed, though there is reason to believe that it is a human head.
• The Zeppelin Tube of Firesign Theatre's Giant Rat of Sumatra—an improbable scientific device, explained by goofy scientific sounding babble, around which the plot revolves, is also a MacGuffin.
• David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner revolves around a "process" contained in a notebook which is never revealed to the audience. Similarly, the amount of money at stake is written on a blackboard at the beginning of the film; all characters appear impressed by the dollar number, but the amount is never shown to the audience. Both are MacGuffins.
• In The Big Lebowski, the rug that "really tied the room together" is a MacGuffin.
• In Dude, Where's My Car?, Jesse and Chester encounter two groups of aliens who are trying to find a MacGuffin called the Continuum Transfunctioner. Jesse's car also serves as a MacGuffin.
• In Raise the Titanic!, Dirk Pitt attempts to locate the world's supply of byzanium, a fictional chemical substance.
• In Transformers: The Movie, the Autobot Matrix of Leadership serves as a MacGuffin. Once it's existance is revealed, the rest of the movie focuses on getting it to its new owner. The Matrix has the power to destroy Unicron, and designate the leader of the Autobots, but what it does and how exactly it does it is never explained.
• The events in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon revolve around a sword called the "Green Destiny," which is alleged to have mythical powers never fully explained.
• The comedy film My Favorite Blonde, starring Bob Hope and Madeleine Carroll, is largely a parody of Hitchcock's film The 39 Steps, in which Madeleine Carroll had previously appeared. The MacGuffin in My Favorite Blonde is a piece of information which Carroll (portraying an international spy) must convey cross-country to her spymasters' headquarters, at great physical risk to herself. When Bob Hope sensibly asks her why she doesn't just phone them the information, Carroll replies that it's a diagram that can't be explained verbally. So, if this movie were remade today, she could simply send a fax!
• The T-800 CPU and arm in Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• The microfilm in Pickup on South Street. This is one of many Cold War films which would have us believe that a simple mathematical equation (or a diagram) contains some top-secret knowledge which could blow up the planet.

MacGuffin - Television

• Cheers : Sam Malone's Corvette is a MacGuffin that lasts throughout the entire television series' time. The audience rarely sees this Corvette but it is the focus of several episodes and is of the highest importance to Sam, often talked about in relation to Sam's own relationships, as it is revered by all characters, especially women in Sam's life. As far as the audience is concerned though, the fact that this object is a Corvette or a car in general, is entirely irrelevant.
• Bionic Six : An explicit MacGuffin reference comes from an episode of the Bionic Six cartoon of the late 1980s in which the "MacGuffin Ray", a dummy weapon, is used exclusively to lure the evil Dr. Scarab out of hiding.
• G.I. Joe : A 1986 episode of G.I. Joe, Once Upon a Joe, features a MacGuffin Device which "alters the fabric of reality" by projecting as solid hallucinations the imagination of the user.
• Due South : An episode ("Chicago Holiday") of the television series Due South features a matchbook as an obvious McGuffin. In the course of the episode, we encounter a cleaner named Mrs. McGuffin, an in/out board that reads Mac | Buff | In (the top of the B is scratched out) and a security guard whose badge reads Niffug C.M. (seen in a mirror).
• Alias : Practically every episode of Alias is centered around a MacGuffin which the CIA and/or SD-6 is after.
• Good Eats : episode The Remains of the Bird utilizes a fictive documentary filmmaker (Blair MacGuffin) to drive its plot along.
• Taz-Mania : In one episode of Taz-Mania, Taz's father Hugh and brother Jake accidentally acquire a carton of orange juice and spend the remainder of the episode being chased by secret agents who want it back. At the end, they look into the carton and gasp, at which point the episode infuriatingly ends.
• GetBackers : In the anime GetBackers, the "platinum" Ban and Ginji attempt to retrieve in episodes 3–5 is (almost explicitly) a MacGuffin.
• Sam and Max (cartoon version) : The episode "The Glazed MacGuffin Affair" has them trying to prevent the banning of their favorite snack food, Glazed MacGuffins, which is never really described.
• Codename: Kids Next Door : Another MacGuffin foodstuff that is never really described: the legendary "fourth flavor" of ice cream (after vanilla, chocolate and strawberry) in the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Op FLAVOR". KND also does another food MacGuffin with "the goods" in "Op REPORT" later on.
• Lost : Both the mysterious creature and the island's power can be considered MacGuffins; although they provide the character motivation, we never actually see the creature, and by the end of Season 1 we are no wiser about the island than we have been for most of the series.
• Stargate SG-1 : The first five or so seasons of this Sci-fi show revolved around the MacGuffin of unspecified 'advanced technologies' that could be used to defend Earth from far more powerful alien enemies. The titular space-exploration team very rarely found technologically advanced cultures - aside from their enemies, the Goa'uld and Jaffa - and the few advanced cultures either wouldn't or couldn't share their technology. Around the show's sixth season, Earth began to develop its own interstellar spacecraft, and the focus of the series shifted.
• In similar fashion, the Stargate spin-off series Stargate Atlantis first season resolved around a MacGuffin. The Atlantis Expedition team had travelled to another galaxy, and without a ZPM (Zero Point Module) - an incredibly advanced power source - the team would be unable to use the Stargate to return to Earth. The ZPM-MacGuffin was resolved at the end of the first season.
• The fourth season of 24 partly revolved around a MacGuffin known as a Dobsen-type Override which could remotely control America's nuclear power plants. In the context of the story, relatively little is impacted by the actual device besides that it is capable of mass destruction. It could theoretically have any apocalyptic function, and the basic story would still be the same, thus making it a MacGuffin. In that same season, the "nuclear football" briefcase is also a MacGuffin for a time.
• Aliens, or proof of alien life, were a core MacGuffin for the X-Files series (and movie).
• In the anime series Yu-gi-oh, the three God Cards are MacGuffins until they are discovered and played, when they cease to be.
• Frasier, a spin-off of Cheers based on the character of the same name, contains a character named Marris. She is the wife of Frasier's brother Niles. She is not seen nor heard until several seasons have passed, during which time the entire perception of her depends on the reactions of the other characters to her and her actions. Despite this, she is a rather pivotal character.
• Similarly, on Cheers, Norm talks frequently about his wife Vera, but we never see her face on camera.
• Gold Roger's treasure from the anime/manga One Piece is almost certainly a MacGuffin. No one knows exactly what the "One Piece" is, but just about everyone wants to get their hands on it.
• On Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the members of the NYPD Major Case Squad will sometimes investigate minor cases - this is explained by the marginal and fleeting involvement of a government official or federal employee who otherwise has no further role in the episode.

MacGuffin - The written word

• Plot devices like the MacGuffin are used in stories dating back at least to Desdemona's handkerchief in William Shakespeare's play Othello, and possibly further back still. Other MacGuffins prior to the invention of the term include Pip's "great expectations" of future wealth in the Charles Dickens book of that title.
• The letter in The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe. The hero must try to recover the letter before the villain can reveal its contents - but the reader never learns what the contents are.
• The offense against the owner of the wine cellar in The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. This offense is never fully described but apparently drives him to commit murder against Fortunato.
• In the short story "Doc Wilde and the Mad Skull", Tim Byrd has his pulp hero fighting to regain a secret weapon called "The MacGuffin Device" from diabolical villain Mad Skull. (The original tale was published in 1984, but recent news has come that Byrd and Australian comics artist Gary Chaloner are releasing a comic adaptation of it).
• The Wu Ming collective's 54 features a "McGuffin Electric" television set as a plot device. In its previous work (as the Luther Blissett collective), the group has referred to actions linking objects or events in the real world as "MacGuffins".
• In an explicit nod to Hitchcock, Paul Muldoon's 1990 long poem Madoc: A Mystery includes a shadowy, conspiratorial character named MacGuffin or MacGoffin.
• Possibly the canonical MacGuffin in the role-playing game genre is the titular device in the Paranoia role-playing game adventure The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues.
• Slavoj Zizek, a Hitchcock aficionado, has used the MacGuffin as an illustration of the structural principles of psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan in his book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). In 2003 Zizek compared the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to a MacGuffin[3].
• In The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin, a MacGuffin, in this case a big 'M' identified only as a 'Maguffin' in the book, becomes key to unraveling of the story's mystery. Jack, one of the book's protagonists describes a Maguffin humorously, and accurately, in this way: "In all detective thrillers, there is always a Maguffin. The Maguffin is the all-important something, the all-importantness of which will not become apparent until its important moment has come."
• In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, the main character's cat and its disappearance (and later re-appearance) is a classic MacGuffin, mostly seeing how he disappears to stimulate the character to start his investigation - then returns once the stimulant is no longer necessary (another disappearance serves a much more important stimulant, making the cat's abcense no longer necessary).

MacGuffin - Video Games

• In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the main character CJ is asked by The Truth to steal a mysterious bottle of green goo from a military train. What the goo actually is, or its importance to The Truth is never revealed.

• Many video games in the adventure and RPG genres include simple fetch quests, in which the object is to obtain an item for some random Non-player character in order to advance the plot. As the item in question is frequently irrelevant or unrelated to the plot, and the main characters generally have no reason to retrieve it other than to satisfy the NPC and obtain something they need, these quests serve as MacGuffins. This is often compounded when the quest to retrieve one such item encounters a roadblock in the form of another character desiring yet another item, extending into a long sequence of item trading. Fans of such games usually deride such quests as filler material included to lengthen the game, or as a quick fix for game balance by providing the opportunity for characters to gain experience or valuable rewards before continuing their adventure. This does not, however, preclude a game which includes such plot devices from being enjoyable or popular; for example, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time includes several such quests, including a long item-trading sequence, yet is widely considered one of the greatest video games of all time.

• A variant on this theme is the common practice in many adventure games to include an item which the player must collect a certain number of in order to unlock more areas (containing more such items), gain new abilities (which help to collect more such items), or otherwise advance towards the actual goal of the game. Examples include the musical notes in Banjo-Kazooie, the stars in Super Mario 64, and the bananas in Donkey Kong 64.

• In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush spends the entire game trying to acquire the treasure of Big Whoop without knowing its exact nature. The treasure turns out to be a plot device -- a ticket to a carnival -- that leads to the game's (rather confusing) ending.

• In the video game Star Control II (Also in the remake, The Ur-Quan Masters) the mercantile race of the Melnorme offer a MacGuffin to the player: When first encountered and discussing the supply of information for credits, the bridge of their craft changes colour to purple. When questioned as to why their bridge turned purple, they offer to supply this information in exchange for 12 million credits, which are only obtainable via supplying them with 'harvested' biological specimens and information. However, it is impossible to raise these funds, so the secret will remain so. They are also interested in the location of so-called Rainbow Worlds, planets that confound conventional scanners. Although they become of use later in the plot, the reasons that the Melnorme require the locations of these worlds are not disclosed - it is a MacGuffin in that it has no bearing on the outcome, but is a plot device which the player is able to act upon.

• In the video game Indigo Prophecy the Indigo Child holds a secret that will give the ultimate answer of life, and a race against time to hear the Indigo Child's secret takes place. Depending on the player's actions a different faction will hear the secret, but in every scenario it is never revealed what the secret itself is.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Other examples", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki