This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Mark1000: Shouldn't this entry be Clingy MacGuffin? (one word) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macguffin
Ununnilium: Violated the "bottom of the list" rule, because it really is one of the most important examples; not the first, but probably the one that inspired the most imitators.
Seth: Well that ones a given.
Robert: Removed 'Probably the best-known example is the One Ring from Lord Of The Rings, whose very presence was addictive.'
It doesn't fit the trope. The Ring abandoned both Isildur and Gollum, and tried to abandon Frodo. In fact, the Ring is pretty near the opposite of this trope. A Clingy Macguffin is something you want to get rid, but it always comes back - the Ring is something you want to keep which will abandon you at whim. The only person the Ring would cling to is Sauron, and he certainly wouldn't want to be rid of it.
Lale: Any other weapons/magical objects that do that? If so, sounds like another trope.
Fast Eddie: "something you want to keep which will abandon you at whim". Ooh, I know this one! Fame. No. Money. Rats, that's not it... First Lover! Yeah, that's the ticket.
Robert: Good luck, traditionally. If I knew how to keep luck with me, I wouldn't need it. I think the Talisman in Stephen King's book of that name worked the same way, and I'm sure there are other examples of Fickle Mac Guffins — evil things that abandon you when they are most needed, good things that go to the one who needs them most — but I can't think of any examples right now.
Lale: Somehow, Dead Last got listed twice.
thatother1dude: I remember an old story where a man catches a dwarf (or some small magical creature) and makes him give him a stone that grant eternal youth. When he find out this means that nothing will ever move or change, he tries to just bury the stone or throw it away but it just Clingy shows back up and he has to give it back to for it to stay away. I forgot the name but it was a story in a grade school literature book so I was wondering if anyone else remembers this?
yinyang107: Does anyone know whose guitar that originally was in the Twilight Zone? You know, the one that the crappy guitarist buys and it gives him 1337 guitaring skillz? It's a good example, so I put it as "the guitar".
Etherjammer: Trivial point: I corrected the use of "Herodot" in one of the later examples to "Herodotus". "Herodot" is a relict in non-English languages and isn't used at all by current English writers. (It's not accurate to the Greek either, where it was "hErodotos".)
minimal-rho: Removed Reiji Maigo.
Alkthash: Anybody else think that this
◊ is the perfect image for this page?
Meshakhad: Whoever put down Dawn from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, that was not funny.
