Mac Guffin / Video Games

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• The titular Acorn in Acorn Story mysteriously disappears at the very beginning and you spend the rest of the game searching for it.
• Isabella in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a living MacGuffin. Completely amnesiac except for mysterious knowledge concerning where the protagonists should go next, her return is eventually demanded by the game's Big Bad on pain of aerial bombardment... after which it's revealed that nothing about her is particularly special (since she's a clone); the bastard just wanted to see what would happen if he held the last settlement of man Hostage for MacGuffin.
• Akatsuki Blitzkampf has the Blitz Motors, secret devices that produce unlimited quantities of electric energy. Some are already in the hands of the antagonists, like the one that Murakumo has in his stage or the smaller ones used to create Blitztank and the Elektrosoldats, but the most important and sought after one is carried by the protagonist, Akatsuki.
• Jeremy Hartwood's antique piano in Alone in the Dark (1992). Both characters go to Derceto specifically to find it (Edward Carnby to retrieve it for an antique dealer, Emily Hartwood for its secret compartment where she hopes to find a message from her late uncle) but once they've found it, they're trapped in Derceto and have more important matters to deal with (like their own survival).
• The XJ Unit in Trilby: The Art of Theft. Its purpose is never explained, but the Company are willing to do anything to get it back.
• Assassin's Creed has the Pieces of Eden, powerful artifacts of technology created by a long-extinct civilization known as the Isu for the purpose of controlling their human slaves. The Pieces consist of Apples (small, glowy, round objects that can create supernatural events), Swords (melee weapons), Staves (which embody authority and dominance) and Shrouds (golden cloths that can heal others), They have been used by numerous conquerors and other important historical figures to achieve their goals. The Templars also prioritize the acquisition of the Pieces to create a One World Order to rule humanity.
• 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...
• The Crystals in Blob Wars are revealed as the reason for the alien invasion.
• The Blood add-on Cryptic Passage has Caleb heading out to retrieve an ancient scroll, which is, according to the backstory, "capable of upsetting balance of power in the otherworld". That said, the "scroll" might as well be anything else, since it serves just as an excuse for Caleb to shoot his way through new hordes of monsters.
• Early in The Book of Unwritten Tales Ivo the elf comes across an elderly goblin who babbles about a book containing information which is crucial to the fate of their world. Lampshaded by the fact that he introduces himself as Professor MacGuffin.
• 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.
• 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 you never even get to see it in the game.
• Chrono Trigger both uses it straight and subverts it, formerly with the Gate Key (which gets stolen once, but is only mentioned twice in the context of the story as a convenient device to open Time Travel gates. It's subverted with Marle's pendant, which seems to be just as much of a MacGuffin at first, but later becomes vital and useful after its upgrade. Not only is it used to obtain the Cool Ship, but it allows you to open the closed boxes that are scattered everywhere in the game world.
• In fact, the sequel to Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, is perhaps an even better example than its predecessor: The Frozen Flame, a mystical artifact which grants its owner ultimate power, is used to drive the plot up until Chronopolis. However, it turns out that instead of an "artifact" it's a giant honkin' rock which is neither frozen nor a flame, and while it does technically possess great power, it requires a huge lab and tons of futuristic equipment to use it. Which, by the way, you don't get to... it appears as a background graphic before a boss battle, and then you never see it again. And then you kick yourself and realize that if you hadn't been chasing the Frozen Flame, you'd be back in your home world, living the idyllic (and very boring from a gameplay standpoint) life you led in the first 15 minutes of 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.
  • One alignment mission hinges on what you decide to do with Steven Werner's precious item. That's the name of the item in question, "Steven Werner's precious item".
• The Contra series has the Alien Cell in Hard Corps and the Relic of Moirai from Shattered Soldier.
• Crysis Warhead is about chasing a MacGuffin. But with more explosions.
• The Diablo series is loaded with this trope, almost every quest has you off finding a MacGuffin needed to complete a side-quest or to move the plot forward.
  • Optional sidequests in the first Diablo has you go down into the church labyrinth to find a MacGuffin, (Ogden's Sign, Magic Rock, Anvil of Fury, Black Mushroom+Monster Brain), and then bring it back to the quest-giver NPC in Tristram. One that must always be brought back however, is Lazarus' Staff which is needed to access Lazarus' lair, and always happens to block the access to the final labyrinth level; Diablo's level.
  • Diablo II continues the trend.
    • Act 3, similar to Act 2, to open the door to Mephisto's lair, find the 4 pieces of an ancient flail throughout the Act that must then be put together to form a full flail (Khalim's Will). The optional quests also sends you out to find the Golden Bird, Gidbinn Blade, Lam Essen's Tome MacGuffins.
    • Act 5, the Relic of the Ancients isn't a MacGuffin you can obtain, but it's plot relevant for Baal to reach the World Stone.
  • Diablo III of course, continues the trend.
    • Act 1, To enter the lower levels of the cathedral, find Leoric's MacGuffin in one of the cemetery crypts. Later on, send the player off to locate the three shattered sword pieces of an angel's MacGuffin, but wait... to gain access to one of the rooms that a sword piece is in, you need to side-track and find the two Orbs that will open the door in the nearby forest.
    • Act 2, Shen's introduction has him finding an item. Then of course there's Zoltan Kulle's long side-tracking task of finding the pieces of his body that must then be put together in his hidden library to make a full MacGuffin. The Act then introduces the Black Soulstone MacGuffin which apparently houses all the souls of the defeated evils from Diablo II. Belial's MacGuffin is then placed in it at Act's end.
    • Act 3, The Black Soulstone is seen throughout the Act. Once Azmodan's MacGuffin is placed in it at Act's end, the plot behind the Black Soulstone will then start-up the events for the next Act.
    • Act 4, Diablo itself, is the MacGuffin; being the second rendition of the Black Soulstone.
• Dragon Age II has the Qunari holy book. The Qunari are in Kirkwall searching for it, they stay because they can't find it, and eventually become the antagonists of Act II because of the first two points, but the actual contents of the book don't matter to the plot.
• The Orb in dnd can't be used for anything in-game, but getting it out of the dungeon is your whole objective and doing so brings you to the win screen.
• Dubloon revolves entirely around a band of pirates fighting the Navy to get their hands on the Golden Chest, which is said to contain unimaginable riches, but its actual value is up in the air since the game ends when you finally get your hands on it.
• The Amulet of Kings in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It has no in-game effect and you can't wear it in any case, but it's the symbol of the pact with Akatosh that keeps the Daedra out, so if a Septim (your buddy Martin) wears it and lights the Dragonfires, then the Daedra Invasion will be taken care of.
• Petra from Emerald City Confidential is searching for the Spirit Rod and Keystones in order to restore the magical balance to Oz.
• Appears in all three main games of Fairune. In 1, it's the three Spirit Icons, used to unlock the gate to the Demon King. In 2, it's the six Storage Devices containing Layla's memories. And in Origin, it's three medals and a flower used to save the Fairies.
• The GECK in Fallout 2. It is established as a technological marvel that will solve all your village's problems, but the item itself serves no purpose other than getting you out of the starting area and setting the plot in motion. In fact it is no longer relevant by the time you do find it, and finding it at all is optional. There's also a minor Worthless Treasure Twist; the GECK turns out to be nowhere near as powerful as it's claimed to be, and is mostly just a collection of seeds and fertilizers that would be helpful for building a plot of farmland for a small community.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, you're a courier who was attacked for the package he/she was carrying and left for dead in the desert. The main plot is apparently finding the people who attacked you and discovering what was in the package. This MacGuffin actually turns out to be useful if you pursue either of the two (out of four) endgame questlines that have you siding with either Mr. House (head honcho of New Vegas) or the robot Yes Man.
  • In The Lonesome Road DLC, it's revealed that the Courier once delivered a similar MacGuffin to the Divide, becoming an Unwitting Instigator of Doom and unfortunately leading it to become the hell-hole it is today.
• The eponymous princess from Fat Princess. The game entirely revolves around capturing her, and she does nothing but sit around while one team tries to capture her and another team tries to make her too fat to capture.
• Final Fantasy has featured the Crystals, Plot Coupon macguffins almost always numbering four or a multiple of four, that show up constantly. The details are highly truncated here; the wiki for the series shows just how frequently this motif is used in the series. In most of the series, crystals or some crystalline macguffin drives the plot but doesn't actually do anything.
  • Final Fantasy I had four crystals that captured some kind of magic essence when a major boss was defeated and somehow empowered the big time-loop at the core of the narrative.
  • Final Fantasy III had four light and four dark crystals that were supposed to create an imbalance when used by the Big Bad.
  • Final Fantasy IV had four light crystals and four dark crystals that did absolutely nothing but somehow powered the plot to open a path to the moon. Then near the end of the game, a bunch more lunar crystals show up, doing nothing but driving the fight with the last villain.
  • Final Fantasy V had four elemental crystals that kept the balance of the elements in the world. Trying to harvest their power causes potential disaster.
  • Final Fantasy VI has the frozen souls of a magical species, Espers, serving as the power source for unstoppable Magitek and the source for when The Magic Comes Back.
  • Final Fantasy VII has crystalized mako, or life energy, in materia, which allows the use of magic and also causes potential world-ending disaster.
  • Later games reuse or repeat these ideas in other variations.
• The Fire Emblem from the Fire Emblem series takes the form of the local MacGuffin most of the time:
  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem: The Emblem is known as the Shield of Seals; forged from one of Naga's fangs, it's the treasure of House Archanea and the counterpart of the Falchion sword. Princess Nyna entrusted Marth with it in Shadow Dragon, which inadvertedly flared up Prince Hardin's jealousy, and is implied to be one of the reasons why he went Brainwashed and Crazy in Mystery of the Emblem. As a plus, the Emblem itself is said to have a curse named Curse of Artemis, dooming many of its wielders to lead tragic lives... and holy shit it broke poor Nyna, though Marth and Caeda managed to mostly dodge it.
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: In an exception to the rule, it is mentioned in one conversation in the ending as the sigil of the House of Velthomer. Makes sense, the Jugdral games take place centuries before the Fire Emblem/Shield of Seals itself was created.
  • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade and Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: It's the Imperial Seal of the Kingdom of Bern and one of the biggest proofs of the King/Queen of Bern's authority. In Blazing Blade it's needed for Prince Zephiel's coming of age ceremony, and in Binding Blade King Zephiel's sister Guinevere steals it in a desperate attempt to stop him and the war he's sponsoring.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: In the Magvel game, the Fire Emblem is one of the Sacred Stones themselves, stored in the Grado Empire. When Prince Lyon shatters it, one half becomes the Dark Stone.
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: It's an alternate name for the infamous Lehran's Medallion, which keeps the goddess Yune sealed. Only completely pure people can hold it without going insane; two of these persons are Ike's Missing Mom Elena and later his little sister Mist. (Ashnard is also able to touch it with no effects to his sanity, but that's because he's pure insane already.)
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening: Set centuries after the Archanea game, this timeline has the aforementioned Shield of Seals renamed as the Pedestal of Flames and as the national treasure of Ylisse, alongside the Falchion. Finding five missing gemstones that once were part of it will unlock its full power and prevent the Bad Future. And as a plus, when the Emblem is restored and the world is saved, the Curse of Artemis is undone and the cast lives happy lives.
  • Fire Emblem Fates: the Emblem is... NOT a shield or emblem in itself but the Final Form of the Avatar's sword, Yato, which he/she uses in the Golden Path.
  • The Fire Emblem is more important in Fire Emblem: Three Houses than it had been in a long time, although the localization obscures this. A big deal is made of the discovery that the player character's Crest (an in-universe power system passed down by bloodlines) is the very rare Crest of Flames, last observed over a thousand years before the story. The original Japanese actually translates literally as "Fire Emblem", but actually calling it that would be inconsistent, as no other Crest is referred to as an "emblem", so this is translated as the Crest of Flames. Edelgard had it surgically forced upon her, making her much more powerful but possibly shortening her lifespan and inspiring her to abolish the Crest system so that no one can suffer as she had ever again.
    • Crests in general are this; the Super Breeding Program that exists in order to pass them down is a major part of the setting, and the conflict it creates jump starts the plot. However, outside allowing a character that has one to fully utilize Relics, what exactly they do is left vague. In terms of gameplay they all have very generic effects, and only one of the protagonists has what their Crest does explicitly spelled out. Given that this means that Muggles can compete with characters that have a Crest without any difficulty, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
  • Fire Emblem Engage: The Fire Emblem is not just an object, but also an ephithet used for Alear, who was resurrected into the 13th Emblem by the 12 ring Emblems, therefore turning Lumera's birthday gift into an Emblem Ring. Unique amongst other Fire Emblems, they're a completely sentient being.
• The guffins in Fisher-Diver hold no actual relevance to the minimalist plot and are impossible to discern what they actually are; they drive the plot along only because they are part of the cost to upgrade your fishing license. The name choice is no coincidence, either; when a commenter on the game's Kongregate page inquired what they are, 2DArray responded with the link to Wikipedia's MacGuffin page. What are relevant are the messages attached to them.
• Freelancer has the alien artifact. For 90% of the game, all you know about it is that it keeps getting space stations blown up under Trent's feet.
• Freespace 2 features the GTVA Colossus, the 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.
  • The Colossus is later heavily damaged or even destroyed in a one-on-one engagement to show us how badass the new Shivan juggernaut Sathanas is. Colossus can only survive the engagement if the player destroys all four of Sathanas' forward beam cannons in an earlier mission.
• 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.
• God of War Ragnarök: The unfinished mask that Odin is studying. It's clearly magical and somehow connected to a rift in reality, but exactly what it does is left undefined except for pointing towards its other pieces and Garm, who gives a false positive because he can open portals himself. Odin thinks it's the key to the answers he seeks, Mimir thinks it's a red herring, and nobody ever finds out because when Atreus gets the opportunity to use it, he's had enough of Odin's bullshit and smashes it instead.
• Grapple Dog: The Cosmic Gadgets. They were supposedly used to seal Nul, and are revealed to open an unstable portal in the endgame.
• .hack: The Key of Twilight is a mysterious item told of in legend in every iteration of 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.
• In Gregory Horror Show: Soul Collector, the player starts the game in possession of a red hanky. This hanky serves no purpose until the final cutscene after completing the game, in which the player wraps it around Neko Zombie's injured foot. This act of caring then inspires Neko Zombie to burn down Gregory House.
• Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures: More often than not, the player's quest is to find some random Ancient Artifact, supposedly to protect it from Nazis, thieves, etc.
• Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass has the Secret Knowledge, a book that holds the key to permanently defeating the titular Pulsating Mass, and you spend the last third of the game searching for it and trying to pull it out of the Mass's grasp. To top it all off, you're never told what will defeat the Pulsating Mass — The first time it's opened, Jimmy's dyslexia keeps him from reading it; the second time, it's waterlogged and made difficult to decipher; when Jimmy finally understands it in the game's climax, you're never shown what's written in the book.
• Kane & Lynch: Dead Men features a pair of briefcases early on that Kane and Lynch must try to capture within three weeks to save Kane's family. After finding that one of the cases is missing from its vault, they try and fail to find the last case, and after they're betrayed by The 7, they cause a mass jailbreak to get a crew together and continue all the way to Japan to capture the second briefcase. We never discover what's in the briefcases.
• Kingdom Hearts has the eponymous Kingdom Hearts as the MacGuffin of the entire series, since all the organizations are desperately seeking it. Although at first, most of them only know that it's a source of ultimate power, but no one knows for sure what its true nature is. For example, Maleficent thinks it's an actual kingdom, and Ansem The Seeker Of Darkness thinks that it's a realm of purest darkness! It's actually the heart of all worlds. Also, all those hearts freed from The Heartless by the keyblade end up there, collectively taking the form of a heart-shaped moon of immense mystic power. Xemnas and Ansem just exploit phenomena that cause doorways to it to physically manifest. Organization XIII wants to use it to find their hearts and become whole, except for their leader, who wants the power.
  • The Kingdom Hearts that the Organization had was a synthetic copy made from the hearts freed by the keyblade when it is held captive by an Emblem Heartless. Only Ansem and Master Xehanort came close to obtaining the real Kingdom Hearts and the Kingdom Hearts behind the Door to Darkness was incomplete as not all of the world's hearts have been returned, courtesy of Sora sealing the keyholes of some worlds and Master Xehanort's plan to forge the X-Blade was incomplete, as the complete X-Blade can only be formed by the clashing of 7 lights and 13 darknesses.
  • The first game also has the seven Princesses of Heart, although the heroes are only concerned with Kairi, who also serves as something of a Living MacGuffin herself (though less so in the second game, where she takes a more active role and is more established) until her actual rescue late in the game, where she actively rescues Sora and then gives Sora a powerful keyblade.
  • Newer games also introduce the X-Blade as a macguffin, with Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] revealing all the main villians' plots from previous games were attempts to obtain the "materials" to reforge it. Consequently, the series also has a macguffin event: The Keyblade War.
• The 11th level quest in Kingdom of Loathing is the Quest for the Holy MacGuffin. When you find it, its image turns out to be a box with a giant question-mark on the side, and you can't do anything with it except give it to the Council of Loathing, who then stash it in a secret warehouse and forget about it.
• In King of the Castle, one of the possible victory paths for the King involves going on a quest for the Sceptre of Sages, a magical artifact dating back to the reign of Queen Alma the Wise. If the King retrieves it, they inspire absolute devotion in the Kingdom while they wield it, but it could just as easily be a magic jewel or sword - or even the ordinary stick it appears to be until the King touches it - for all the effect it has on the story.
• The Triforce in The Legend of Zelda zigzags this from game to game — sometimes it has all kinds of useful powers and plays a major role in the climax, and other times, its only reason for existing is that Ganon wants it. It's most pronounced in the original, where its relevance to the plot consists solely of "Ganon stole half of it, Zelda broke up the other half, go put them back together." There's no indication of what either part of the Triforce actually does, and by the final stretch of the game, Link has the completed Triforce of Wisdom, which has no ingame effect aside from signalling that it's time to handle Ganon.
  • The Medallions in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. What they do is never explained, but the Sages give them to Link when he defeats the boss and they are required to win the game. At one point in development, they were supposed to have powers.
• The onklunk in Leisure Suit Larry 2: 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.
• The flash game Level Up! lampshades this quite humorously. In the codex, which details everything you encounter and/or do in the game, the magical gems that you need to collect are described thusly: "McGuffin object with mysterious powers and incredible value, considering they are lying around everywhere."
• Luxaren Allure: Lampshaded. The king of Erdengard has Karuna retrieve a ring from the Naga Queen in exchange for another MacGuffin just to give her a quest, as it is said in prophecy that the Chosen One must prove themselves. And while the king of Parvian would like to just give his MacGuffin, he can't, as it is locked inside a temple.
• Mass Effect 2:
  • Played with during Kasumi's loyalty mission. Keeping in line with the numerous homages to heist films found in her mission, the object you are sent to steal — a "greybox" containing the memories of her former partner Keiji Okuda — appears to be a straight guffin at first. It contains mysterious data regarding an Alliance scandal buried in Keiji's memories and everyone, including Shepard, wants to get their hands on this information. However, this trope is subverted in that Kasumi's primary motivation for recovering the greybox is to relive her personal memories with Keiji. Averted most definitely in Mass Effect 3, when its revealed that the greybox contained information on an Alliance black ops raid on a batarian science lab that was studying Reaper tech, which becomes vital to Kasumi's Sidequest.
  • Played straight during the MSV Strontium Mule sidequest, in which Shepard is sent to recover a "payload" from a ship which has been hijacked by Blue Suns mercenaries. It's never explained just what the payload is, only that Cerberus wants it. When Shepard opens the crate containing the payload, it glows in a fairly obvious Shout-Out to Pulp Fiction.
• The optical disc from Metal Gear Solid. Snake gets it early on and doesn't really know what it's for, but unbeknownst to the player, almost the entire plot revolves around that disc.
• 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.
  • Some Monkey Island fanfics and fangames provide other legendary treasures of the Caribbean, including Bigger Whoop, Biggest Whoop, Big Dope/Big Poop, Holy Cow, Nothin' Special, and Ooh Shiny, and the magical golden grog mug guarded by LeChuck's brother LeDrunkie.
• The firespawn Blaze in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon has been accused of being a living MacGuffin; the quest to defeat him originally meant to prevent The End of the World as We Know It, but the added side-effect of gaining godlike power inspires the other characters besides those intended on beating him to go after him and provide the basis of the game. As per the nature of the MacGuffin, Blaze's power in relation to whoever defeats him changes with the person, and is never solidly defined.
  • Finally, Shinnok's Amulet was the MacGuffin for at least three games in the Mortal Kombat series, even though the most we ever learn about it is that it can only be created once (proven false by Quan Chi making a fake one), and that it's used to fuse the Kamidogu (yet another MacGuffin in Deception) and, thus, all of reality together.
• The Amulet of Yendor in NetHack.
• In the Neverwinter Nights core campaign:
  • The Waterdhavian creatures in the first act are needed to concoct a cure for the Wailing Death plague. By the end of the chapter, the cure, though produced, is stolen and it is revealed that the Wailing Death is actually of mystical origins spread by the blessings of fake Helmites. The plague stops once the fake healers are uncovered and Helm's Hold is purged, leaving the cure mostly irrelevant.
  • The Hero of Neverwinter must track down the Words of Power in the third and fourth acts before Morag's cult can use all four of them to release her from her sanctuary/prison. Although two examples of their capabilities do exist (the magic snowglobe and the Source Stone), there is no mention of what the Words were originally used for or how the Words are important otherwise. Ultimately, the effort is pointless because Morag discovers that the Word she already possessed is more than enough to suit her purposes and the only reason to have them all is to gain access to the Source Stone. Somehow, they get destroyed at the end of the game.
• The entirety of Nightmare from the Deep 2: The Siren's Call is spent trying to obtain twelve golden fish tokens needed to open Davy Jones' chest, which contains a conch shell that gives the title siren the power to overcome the villain and his artifact-controlled kraken. Once you actually acquire the shell the game awards you the McGuffin [sic] achievement.
• The legendary Rogueport treasure in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Its only actual purpose is getting Mario and Goombella to meet there and start the investigation about the Door. The treasure is quickly overshadowed by the legendary demon about to break the seal on the Door, and it's never mentioned again until the After the Credits sequence. This is because the legendary treasure was actually a rumor spread by the Shadow Sirens to attract attention to Rogueport and get someone to open the Thousand Year Door. They may or may not have known the seal was going to break on its own anyways though. The fact that there actually was a treasure is a coincidence.
• In order to change a wicked person's heart, the Phantom Thieves in Persona 5 need to steal a target's Treasure, the physical manifestation of their corrupt desires, from their Palace. When the deed is done, the Treasure they stole will become a perfect copy of some real-world item that symbolizes when their target's desires became corrupt. For example, after stealing Kamoshida's Treasure, it changed from a Cool Crown in the Palace to an Olympic gold medal Kamoshida won in the real world.
• Planescape: Torment has the Bronze Sphere as its primary MacGuffin. It becomes a Chekhov's Gun if you take it with you throughout the whole game and deduce the identity of the Good Incarnation.
• Arguably the cake in Portal, depending on Chell's motives. It's introduced a while in, but it acts as a motivator and it turns out you were being misled by something nonexistent... Though it turns out that it was real all along.
• The Portalstone from Project × Zone, which Oros Phlox steals for some reason. It's revealed that Oros Phlox are themselves the stone, or more specifically, it's will manifest, and are trying to unite all the worlds.
• In Red Dead Redemption II, the money from the botched Blackwater heist is said to be in-game about $150,000 (over $4 million in 2018 dollars), enough for the gang to live comfortably afterwards and was hidden very well after everything went south. It is a symbol of the gang's sins, to Artifact of Doom levels, as it is a huge part of the reason why the law is hunting them down, setting up the main conflict in the game and the desire of many members to return to it and some who don't, driving conflict among the gang. As the game progresses, Dutch continues to plan large heists to pour more money to replace the take, which only brings more unnecessary attention to the gang. The gang slowly realize that they will never see the money or that there might not be any escape for any of them. In the end, Micah manages to get his hand on it and John steals it after he's dead. Tying into the game's morality, it's implied that this would eventually kickstart the events in the first game and lead Agent Ross to John and his family.
• The plot of The Riddle of Master Lu is based around a hunt for the Emerald Seal of the first emperor of China that Master Lu hid in the emperor's tomb. It's a "powerful talisman" that could somehow "be used to unite China under a single dictator". The game is set before the Second World War, and they're afraid of another Hitler or Mussolini. Lu specifically wanted to hide it behind such a riddle that only a mankind united in harmony could uncover it again, but no such luck. Robert Ripley, the Player Character, wants to find it so that it cannot be abused, and unscrupulous villains want to abuse it. Who knows what it does. Sounds like it's magic or something — the story is Magic Realism — but it's not really explained any more than what is said above.
• Scribblenauts has the Starites. We're never given any explanation to them other than Maxwell's objective is to collect them.
  • In Unlimited it's revealed Maxwell does have a reason. At least for that game.
• 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 dreaming or is an in-universe fictional character), but it doesn't actually come up.
• Much of the initial arc of The Secret World involves hunting down a very mystical and mysterious sword, one which has been lost to the ages for some time. In the end, Beaumont doesn't even get to keep it long enough for his master plan to come to fruition. Cassandra walks in at the last moment, stuns the player, obliterates Beaumont, and walks off with it. She's yet to return.
• The Seal of Metatron from Silent Hill 3 is a MacGuffin of the Maltese Falcon kind: you have to pound your way through a rotten hospital in Dark Silent Hill to get it, you can't use it during normal gameplay, it's supposed to kill God, and in the end, Claudia says it's just a piece of worthless crap.
• Skies of Arcadia has a Moonstone meteor crash into Shrine Island near the heroes' home of Pirate Isle. Vyse and Aika go ahead and retrieve it, but its real purpose is have them off the island so that 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 fuel source.
• The Skull Heart in Skullgirls not only fulfills the purpose of a MacGuffin, the trope is actually referred to by name during Peacock's story.
  Peacock to Marie: Some hellish MacGuffin turned you into an undead killing machine and I was created to stop you.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth has the titular Stick of Truth, a twig that the kids treat as an artifact that can shape reality. In other words, anyone who has the stick can make up and/or ignore the rules of the fantasy game that they're playing and ultimately it's just an ordinary stick. This doesn't stop the Big Bad Government Guy to immediately go mad with nonexistent power upon wielding it, believing that with it he no longer has to do the government's bidding.
• In Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, the player character's first mission is to infiltrate an embassy being raided by guerrillas. It's stressed that your objective is to destroy a computer containing sensitive information. Even the hostages being held are of secondary importance. When you contact the man that knows where this information is, he gives you an email he stole from one of his captors and your next objective is to decrypt it. The initial computer you were sent to smash — the one that was so critical it was worth risking the lives of dozens of hostages — is never mentioned again.
• Almost every floor in Streets of Rogue has at least one mission where you have to retrieve an item such as a tooth (which is described as proof of killing someone), hard drive, will, or MacGuffin Muffin. The item is literally selected at random and stops being relevant as soon as you pick it up (or hand it over, for the optional quests), but you need to get it before you can progress to the next floor.
• The entire plot for Threads of Fate involves the main characters questing after the [relic] of ultimate power, capable of granting any wish. It winds up getting transported to another dimension right after the final boss fight, and just short of the opportunity to really begin abusing that sucker's power. C'est la vie.
• In Time Crisis, there is the Kill Sat in the second game, the Terror Bites in the fourth game, and a briefcase containing information about the VSSE in the fifth game.
• 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 Ankaran Sarcophagus from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines; prince LaCroix's obsession with it, and the effect it has on the various vampire factions of the city, drives much of the plot. Subverted in a most satisfying fashion in the anarch and independent endings, where it turns out it contained a bomb planted by your Trickster Mentor intended to kill said prince — even the fact that you were the Unwitting Pawn that allowed the plan to succeed was worth it for the sight of LaCroix opening the casket and finding out what his 'gateway to infinite power' contained...
• Regural missions in Warframe often involve gathering valuable intel that will supposedly help in fighting the Grineer empire and the Corpus, but has no direct value to the players beyond making them outsmart suspiciously insecure security systems, chase down enemies for interrogation, escort rovers or play king of the hill with enemies.
• Wing Commander II lampshades this with Specialist MacGuffin, the poor soul who first spots the traitor aboard your ship radioing a Kilrathi commander. He's promptly shot for his efforts, though not before he grabs the traitor's flight insignia.
• 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 MacGuffins they need to collect this time.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction has the Millennium Items and Egyptian God Cards.

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