Mac Guffin - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Imperial Seal and the Dragon Jade from Ikki Tousen.
Every single episode of Get Backers revolves around one of these. Somewhat justified, as the characters retrieve, transport, protect, etc. things for a living.
In One Piece, the titular treasure is a MacGuffin; nobody knows exactly what it is, but everyone wants to get their hands on it. This is even more evident in the earlier drafts for the manga called "Romance Dawn", where there was no mention of One Piece, and Luffy was a pirate just for the hell of it.
The Crystal Flowers from Petite Princess Yucie, giving the Platinum Princess candidates an excuse to visit each other's worlds.
In Piano, Miu's self-composed piano piece is the MacGuffin. Theoretically, the entire series is built around it. In actuality, it takes a back seat to the "slice of life" drama that makes up the story. The audience only really gets to hear it in the first episode, and even then, it's just an extract. The series finishes just as Miu walks on stage to perform it, a source of snarling frustration if the viewer's been wondering just what the heck she's been working on all this time. Still, at least no-one tried to kill her to get their hands on it.
In Pokemon the entire Orange League episodes are caused by Ash trying to get the mysterious GS Ball to a Pokeball expert named Kurt. No one knows what's in it. By the end of the Johto League episodes, it's simply forgotten. In the games, the GS Ball contained Celebi. However, Celebi has appeared in the anime/movies since then, with no known connection to the GS Ball. One wonders that if they wanted to know what was in the GS Ball, why they didn't just throw it.
- Apparently that wouldn't work. They tried throwing it, using a crowbar, electric saws, and even a laser. Nothing worked, and it was completely forgotten about later. Chances are, not even the producers really knew what the hell was in it.
- The GS Ball in the anime was supposed to be exactly like how it was in the games, but the producers decided to use Celebi for the movies, so when they had Ash give the ball to Kurt, the producers left that subplot unsolved in hopes that the audience would forget about it.
Definitely true with the Key of the Twilight in .hack//SIGN Everyone chases after it for the entire series, and yet no one has the slightest idea what it's supposed to be, often questioning its existence, what it is, what it's supposed to do, and why they're chasing after it. Some viewers are still confused about what it's supposed to be.
- It's commonly accepted to be Aura
  - The games have you chasing down and Data Draining Data Bugs and the 8 Phases. Despite being powerful bosses and the main antagonists (sort of), they don't really do much except show up, battle you, and get destroyed.
In Tokyo Godfathers by Satoshi Kon the baby, Kiyoko, found by the titualr homeless people rests between this and Magnetic Plot Device to the point where the characters start considering the baby to be literally blessed. Also she is technically a MacGuffin Girl.
In a certain episode of Lupin III in which Goemon and Lupin are both trying to get an ancient document from police headquarters, which turns out to be the laws and regulations guide of Japanese policemen...circa 1885 or so, and another such episode where Goemon is up against his former rival-what-killed-his-master, searching for a secret scroll with the final technique. Turns out the scroll is blank and on top of that, the scroll is another one of those Be Yourself metaphor things. Considering the nature of this show, there's probably more.
- The series played with it at one point - Lupin is captured by a Rich Idiot With No Day Job and strapped with a bomb; the guy takes Fujiko hostage as well and sends Lupin to steal a file from the police. The file is the rap sheet for a minor criminal, and none of the heroes can work out why he'd want that. Turns out the rich guy is the criminal, with serious plastic surgery.
- Barring a scant handful, every... single... movie revolves around a MacGuffin, which is inevitably lost by the end.
In Windy Tales, the wind manipulation powers are used mostly as a backdrop for the more Slice Of Life nature of the tales in the title.
The collection of "hanamaru" in Magical Play is mainly used to give the three main characters a reason to hang out with each other.
The titular Dragonballs in Dragonball were originally just an instigator for the story. Goku admitted at the very beginning that he had no plans for a wish and just wanted to see a cool dragon. Bulma was planning to wish for a boyfriend, while Yamcha was going to get rid of his fear of women. The very first wish ended up being just a gag... a pair of woman's panties by Oolong, done to keep Pilaf from using the dragon to conquer the world. Bulma and Yamcha fall in love, not having needed the wishes after all. The second Dragonball hunt was also just Goku looking for his Grandfather's 4-star Dragonball. The necessity to make a specific wish only became important when Tao Pai Pai killed a newfound friend of Goku's while searching for the Dragonballs.
- As the story progressed nearly every Big Bad had their plans for the Dragonballs (most wanted to be immortal) but even then the Dragonballs could be replaced with a credit card and the story could still mostly be told, except without a handy Reset Button. It wasn't until GT that the Dragonballs themselves became a danger to the characters.
The flashy, expensive sneakers are the primary (and possibly only) motivators for Kirenenko in Usavich.
The anime version of World Destruction is about the World Destruction Committee, who spend the entire series carrying around an orb capable of destroying the world. (Only one of them is capable of using it, however, and he has no desire to destroy the world.)
One of Osamu Tezuka's numerous completely fabricated diseases in Black Jack is a disease called 'Mac Guffin Syndrome', said to be incurable (or, at least, impossible to heal without a lot of stamina). It was first mentioned as the disease that a character suffers from... take a wild guess at what it's used for.

Every alien race in Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire gets into a holy war at the same time to get "The Winslow", a furry alligator-like creature that has extreme religious significance. The Winslow's purpose is to be a Shaped Like Itself Mac Guffin. A secondary purpose and/or effect of its primary purpose is to confuse the hell out of everyone.
Lampshade Hanging in the rather atrocious Tenchi Muyo comic by Pioneer, in which Sasami has a special delivered package from Jyurai, which turns out to be Macguffins, a light and tasty delicacy. In fact, they're so good "why else would people chase after them?"
The Secret Six ongoing kicked off with an arc centering around a rather interesting MacGuffin: a get out of Hell free card.
In an issue of Jon Sable Freelance, Jon is hired to retrieve a stolen formula (codenamed 7X) in a sealed envelope, with strict instructions that the envelope is not to be opened. Jon succeeds and returns the formula to its owners. Although he didn't open the envelope, he comments that when it got wet the envelope went transparent and he could read the list of ingredients and there isn't anything there that cannot be bought at a corner drug store. The executives comment that the point is that no one else knows that and burn the envelope. 7X turns out to be the formula for Coca-Cola.
The Arumbayan statue in The Broken Ear. (The Real Life artifact Hergé based it on belongs to the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels.)

The quintessential MacGuffin is The Maltese Falcon. It gets the characters together, pits them against each other, but turns out to be worthless.
The perfect Alfred Hitchcock example is the "government secrets" that motivate the action in North By Northwest (1959).
- Also the man the hero is mistaken for, especially when it's revealed he doesn't really exist
- One of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest examples of a MacGuffin is the uranium sand that Claude Rains was smuggling in wine bottles in Notorious("A vintage sand" is what Cary Grant called it). When studio execs told Hitchcock that movie audiences wouldn't understand why the uranium sand was so important, Hitchcock answered, "Then we'll make it uncut industrial diamonds. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as the villains want it. That's the MacGuffin, that's the motor that drive the plot."
Titanic (1997) is framed around the search for a diamond called La Cœur de la Mer, which is quickly forgotten until the end of the story, when its owner throws it overboard so no one can have it.
The stolen money in Psycho. In reality, everything about the plot becomes irrelevant at the half-way point.
Also used by in Pulp Fiction in the form of the suitcase with the mysterious glowing contents, which is an homage to the 1955 movie Kiss Me Deadly, whose suitcase originally housed a superweapon — a nuclear device. Fans speculated that its Pulp Fiction counterpart held Marcellus' soul. Tarantino called a MacGuffin a MacGuffin, and has made it very clear that he neither knows nor cares what was in the case.
- To paraphrase Samuel L Jackson, the case contained a couple of heavy-ass batteries and some lights.
The silver case in Ronin. In fact, the film's final scene goes slightly out of its way NOT to reveal what's inside it.
The stoner-flick Dude, Where's My Car? has two; first, the titular car, which serves primarily as a plot device to lead our half-baked heroes into zany misadventure after zany misadventure, and second, the Continuum Transfunctioner, an incredibly powerful device (Its power is only exceeded by its mystery) being covertly fought over by two different alien races (which represent themselves as hot chicks and creepy Germans, respectively), a fight that the protagonists slowly find themselves caught in the middle of.
Mission Impossible III features Ethan Hunt trying to keep a nasty weapons dealer from acquiring "The Rabbit's Foot", a small cylindrical kajigger that's assumed to contain some sort of biological weapon (though it's never explicitly stated as such). At the very end of the film, as Hunt leaves to enjoy his honeymoon, he asks his boss just what "The Rabbit's Foot" was, but his boss says he'll only tell him if he stays with the IMF. They all have a good laugh about it, and the movie ends. Shockingly some film reviewers (professional critics!) expressed outrage that they didn't get to find out what the all-important item was, suggesting unfamiliarity with the trope.
- An especially good example, since the rabbit's foot could be anything from a Doomsday Device to Davian's favorite candy bar.
- The first film also had a disc as the primary MacGuffin, though it was clearly defined as being a list of undercover CIA agents. The Rabbit's Foot is pretty much a parody of the standard Mac Guffin; even the hero doesn't know what it is.
- The screenplay did actually explain what the Rabbit's Foot was; apparently it was a particularly nasty and near-unstoppable bioweapon. This detail didn't make it to the final movie however, for various reasons - firstly, Mission: Impossible II had already done the bioweapon plot, secondly it was felt to be too much of an obvious explanation to what The Rabbit's Foot was, and thirdly J.J. Abrams thought it'd make things more interesting by turning the Rabbit's Foot into an outright Mac Guffin (Your Mileage May Vary on whether this was better than just having it as a bioweapon).
In Cast Away, the one box that Tom Hanks never opens, even delivers at the end. We never know what was in it. However, in an Easter Egg on the DVD, it reveals a press conference by the director who, when asked what was in the box, said it was a solar powered satellite phone.
The Allspark from the 2007 Transformers movie is little more than just an object sought by both robot factions.
- The Matrix of Leadership from Revenge of the Fallen. It can be used to activate the Decepticon's Doomsday Device, or revive Optimus. And as it turn out, Sam.
The title train of 3:10 to Yuma is a classic MacGuffin.
The Spanish Prisoner revolves around a secret and valuable industrial "Process" its protagonist has invented.
Each Indiana Jones film involves the search for a MacGuffin. George Lucas and Harrison Ford has even said that the items are MacGuffins, the stories could be told with almost anything else in its place.
- Although, they actually do end up doing something. Like killing the bad guys.
When the screenplay for Good Will Hunting was published as a book, director Gus Van Sant wrote a preface in which he admitted that Will's math talents were a MacGuffin: he doesn't solve a math problem the details of whose solution affect the plot (otherwise, the movie would be more a science-fiction story about the invention of fusion power, or whatever).
For that matter, there's the titular proof in Proof. What it is doesn't matter, only whether Anthony Hopkins or his daughter Gwyneth Paltrow was the one who proved it.
Escape From New York: the tape with the secret of nuclear fusion.
In Mel Brooks' High Anxiety, which contains parodies of numerous Hitchcock films, the lead character (who is terrified of heights) is checking into a hotel when the receptionist informs him that though the hotel had reserved him a lower-level floor, "a Mr. MacGuffin called and requested we change it to the 17th floor." Though MacGuffin is probably a reference to the villains stalking the main character, the name is never mentioned again.
Its A Mad Mad Mad Mad World is based around a bunch of fools trying to locate and claim a hidden stash of $350,000.
- That's $2.62 Million Dollars today, by the way.
Lampshaded in The Departed: "Our target: microprocessors. Yes, those. I don't know what they are, you don't know what they are, who gives a fuck?"
Done for humor in the Beatles' movie Help!. Ringo is given the ring of the goddess Kaili, which he can't get off and which various villains and bad guys are trying to get. One Mad Scientist comes out with the classic MacGuffin line: "With a ring like that, I could—dare I say it?—rule the world!!"
Wonder Woman (1974). A list of U.S. undercover agents stolen by the Big Bad and put up for sale to the highest bidder.
In the 1979 film The Double McGuffin (narrated by Orson Welles), a group of precocious children (including Lisa Whelchel) find a briefcase full of cash and run afoul of Ernie Borgnine and Lyle Alzado.
The "Beaugard" painting in Animal Crackers.
The gold in The Italian Job.
Raising the money to pay the orphanage's debts in The Blues Brothers
Two James Bond movies have these. They are the ATAC transmitter from For Your Eyes Only and, to a lesser extent, the GPS encoder from Tomorrow Never Dies.
- For Your Eyes Only was also the former Trope Namer of No Mac Guffin No Winner (the trope formerly known as Detente Comrade).
In Road To Rio, there are the mysterious Papers that have no bearing on the plot besides having an interesting safe-cracking scene. Lampshaded when Bob Hope and Bing Crosby say that "the world must never know" their contents.
The jailbreak in Down By Law. We never find out how they got out, and it doesn't matter, because the movie is more concerned with the relationships between the characters.
Nuclear testing in The Beginning Of The End, '"Earth vs. The Spider, The Deadly Mantis, and many other monster movies. The bomb's only purpose is to create monsters. Movies like Them! and Godzilla'' don't count, though, because they really are about the bomb.
James Cameron's Avatar is shameless in it's use of Mac Guffin, going so far as to call it "unobtanium".
The buried Confederate gold in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
The Death Star plans in Star Wars: A New Hope.

The Dark Tower is one.
Isaac Asimov's Black Widower mystery stories have the out of print books in "Sunset on the Water", a lucky coin in "The Lucky Piece", and the data in "The Alibi". The data is a somewhat lampshaded MacGuffin, as the government agent telling the story points out that the details are unimportant, but still secret.
Lampshaded in the David Bischoff novel Star Fall, in which the protagonist transfers bodies for a vacation. Unwittingly, he ends up with an illegally modified artificial body capable of all sorts of sci-fi/007 skullduggery, which any number of elements are after. The type of illegal artificial body he is inhabiting is called, you guessed it, a MacGuffin.
The Ring of Power in Lord Of The Rings is, in fact, a MacGuffin, and many books have been written to that effect. Don't believe it? Consider the fact that it's possible to re-enact the whole plot with a Ring whose only power is to corrupt the wearer and turn them invisible — a magical Maltese Falcon. Any other practical use for the Ring, or mechanism for how it would be used to "rule the world" must be taken for Word Of God, since it can't be shown in the context of the work without breaking the setting. This is actually even more cut and dried in the films where the whole moral aspect of using the rings was over-simplified to the point where fans argue about whether anyone but Sauron could have actually used it for its intended purpose (and if they couldn't, then it's a full-on Clingy Mac Guffin since no one but the villain can benefit from it). ^*
^{**To be fair, Tolkien devoted a lot of ancillary material and letters describing what might have happened and the moral consequences if one of the characters had tried to wield the Ring... turning people invisible was just an unintended side-effect. As it is, we see Frodo actually wield the Ring approximately twice, both times to command Gollum, and some argue it was really the Voice of the Ring both times.}
The Silmarilli from The Silmarillion are an even more blatant (and self-consciously transparent) Mac Guffin; they are jewels whose only "power" is that anyone who sees them is filled with a desperate lust for them (i.e. the textbook definition of a MacGuffin). Needless to say, the entire story is about the 1000 year war as the Elves, Men, Dwarves, and Melkor fight over the jewels. When the sons of Feanor finally recover the other two Silmarils, wracked by guilt, they throw them away so that none will ever posess them.
- The Silmarils have two other known powers. One is the navigational aide that gets Eärendil to Valinor, and later guides the Edain to Númenor. Also, Yavanna could, possibly, with Fëanor's help, use them to restore the Two Trees. By the end of The Silmarillion (and The Lord Of The Rings), they haven't been used to do this; it's mentioned elsewhere that this is supposed to happen in the end.
The sole purpose of Angus Mcguffin in Jasper Fforde's The Fourth Bear.
Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's vast fortune in The Brothers Karamazov is said to exist, but even the narrator casts aspersions as to how much money he really has, if any. The sons' owed inheritance is the MacGuffin which gets the plot moving in the beginning, but it is only brought up past the middle of the book in passing. The argument could also be made that the sub-plot involving the schoolboys, which is almost entirely unrelated to the main events of the novel, is a MacGuffin to explore some other themes of spirituality.
Anthony Horowitz parodied The Maltese Falcon in a children's book called The Falcon's Malteser, which had the MacGuffin (a package containing what turned out to be a box of Maltesers chocolates) actually introduced by a character called MacGuffin.
In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations: The Great Expectations themselves. They are used to drive Pip's actions and ambitions, but are never specifically described or realised in the end
Lampshaded in Walking On Glass by Iain Banks. At the end of Steven's story, Steven finds a box of McGuffin's Zen Brand matches, on the back of which is written the answer to Quiss and Ajayi's riddle. Quiss and Ajayi have forfeited all future attempts to answer the riddle, because Quiss has destroyed the Game Table, but we know that their current attempt, earned by completing a game of "Tunnel", will be correct because Ajayi finds a copy of Walking On Glass in the remains of the Game Table.
The plot of the classic satirical novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov revolves around a treasure hidden in a chair. Of course, by the time the main characters find it, the treasure is long gone
In The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin, the main characters find and use a vital object called 'The Maguffin'.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events features a mysterious sugar bowl (a.k.a. the Vessel For Disaccharides) that everyone is looking for. In the last volume, they don't find it. It is implied to possibly contain horseradish.
The Queen's diamond studs in The Three Musketeers.
In some of the Jeeves And Wooster stories of PG Wodehouse, a silver tea-set creamer, hideously forged in the shape of a cow, becomes the focus of a on-going multi-cornered power-struggle. In other stories, the French chef Anatole is deployed as a living MacGuffin.
Lampshaded in Italian writer collective Wu Ming's novel 54, which features a very important TV set manufactured by Mc Guffin Electrics.
The enormous, apocalyptic disaster at the beginning of The Road. We never find out what it was, because that's not important.
Erik Flint made up a Mac Guffin for his book Sixteen Thirty Two (he originally thought he was only going to write one book, not a series) called an Assiti Shard that transports a spherical area through time and space to an Alternate Universe. Flint openly states that he made the things up so that he'd have an easy way to create various Alternate History and Science Fiction books.
- In other words, they serve no purpose other then being an excuse for why George Washington is negotiating with Julius Cesar, or why there's US prisoners and Native Americans fighting dinosaurs, or any other such historical shenanigans.

Done to the point of extreme irritation in Alias as it's obvious by the end of season two that the writers can't come up with a satisfactory explanation for the prophet Rambaldi but are still going to drag out one tired MacGuffin for the rest of the series.
An Angel episode featured the group going on an Indiana Jones-type search for a mystical sword that is the only thing that can defeat their current foe, The Beast. It was All Just A Dream.
Due South: The two-part first season episode "Chicago Holiday" features a matchbook that supposedly will give the owner control of the entire Chicago west side (whatever that means). The list is passed from hand to hand, but we never learn what is actually written on it, nor is it really important except to further the plot. There is also a hotel cleaning woman named "Mrs. MacGuffin", an In/Out Board that shows Mac Guff as "In", and a store security guard "Niffug, C. M.", whose name tag we conveniently see in a mirror, all obvious Shout Outs to Hitchcock.
The Prize for being the last Immortal standing in Highlander.
Season 2 of Prison Break has the characters chasing a MacGuffin all season: Charles Westmoreland's money. It briefly ends up in the hands of T-Bag and Bellick, but aside from an insignificant amount being spent, it only serves to move the plot along. Many things happen because of it, but it ends up as nobody's prize.
- Season 4 also has a MacGuffin in the form of Scylla, the company's "Little Black Book." The first half of the season has the team chasing the Plot Coupon known as "cards" to unlock Scylla, but then it's stolen and everyone spends the rest of the season chasing it. Somewhere late in S4 Michael figures out that Scylla actually contains the secret to super-efficient solar power (or something), but it really doesn't matter to the plot. The point is that if they get Scylla, they can destroy The Company, and if they don't, they all go back to prison.
The remake of Battlestar Galactica turns Earth into a Mac Guffin Location, uses that fact brilliantly in the third season's mid-season ending, then catches the audience off guard in the series finale. Most of the haunting clues the crew of Galactica have been encountering either fall into place or help promote the idea that the "route to Earth" they have been following is really a series of "predestined convenient encounters." The character of Hera becomes the final Mac Guffin needed to find a home planet that turns out to be the real Earth long into its past.
An unaired episode of Dinosaurs, "Scent of a Reptile", revolves around Charlene getting her "scent", which will attract one male dinosaur and one male only, who will be her mate for life. When she realises that her destined mate is a slobbish janitor, her grandmother tells her the only way to change her scent is with a very rare flower found on the other side of the world - the MacGuffin Lily.
The Good Eats episode "Behind the Bird" was created and narrated by one-off character Blair McGuffin.
In an episode of Robin Hood a Celtic necklace is taken from a young peasant girl by Guy of Gisborne in order to give to Marian as a courtship present. When she discovers its origin, she gives it to Robin to return to the girl. The necklace exchanges hands several times throughout the course of the episode (eight characters in all get their chance to steal, find, return or give it away) and its whereabouts finally lead to Marian being forced to agree with marriage to Guy.
The Nickelodeon show Legends Of The Hidden Temple is one of the most literal applications of this trope. Each episode features a historical and/or mythological artifact that is eventually searched for and collected by the contestants. The actual nature of the item is completely unimportant outside of the trivia round, and in fact the item can be, and is, replaced with something else in each episode. The show itself is only concerned with the collection of said item.
The Man From UNCLE: The second half of the third season was especially MacGuffin filled: e.g., the stolen U.N.C.L.E. codes in "The It's All Greek to Me Affair", the explosive hula doll in "The Hula Doll Affair", the THRUSH historian's diaries in "The Pieces of Fate Affair", the Project Quasimodo filmclip in "The Matterhorn Affair", and the dress with the THRUSH coded pattern in "The Hot Number Affair" (Season 03, Episodes 21-25 inclusive).

The Golden Fleece in the story of Jason and the Argonauts.
- The Fleece was actually full of gold, on behalf of being used repeatedly to filter water from a river containing gold dust. Worth its weight in gold, in other words.
The Finnish national epic, The Kalevala, revolves around various people searching for and fighting over the Sampo, which is eventually lost at sea. The standard Kalevala compilation by Elias Lönnrot describes it as a mill which produces gold, wheat and salt, but he made this up - his original sources never specified what it was and nobody really knows to this day.
Several of the Labours of Hercules boil down to "kill dangerous creature(s)", "capture dangerous creature(s)", or "acquire object(s)".
- Killing the Nemean Lion. While the lionskin grants the power of invulnerability, and later is worn by Hercules, its powers aren't relevant to the rest of the story.
- Capturing the Ceryneian Hind (a.k.a. the Golden Hind). Any object whose capture / theft would have offended a deity would have served. Turns into a case of No Mac Guffin No Winner.
- Capturing the Erymanthean Boar.
- Capturing the Mares of Diomedes.
- The girdle of Hippolyta. Its magic powers, if any, aren't relevant; neither is its possible status as a symbol of authority, because the attack by the Amazons was instigated by the false belief that Hercules was engaged in a kidnap attempt, not by anything to do with the girdle itself.
- The apples of the Hesperides. They just have to be retrieved.
The Grail. Much of Arthurian legend concerns different knights' quests for the grail, but once the grail is found, the court of Arthur has nothing better to do and is left to disintegrate.

The Paranoia adventure "The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues". The title Black Box. What it does is eventually revealed, in some versions of the adventure, but it's unlikely your player characters will live long enough to discover it.

One of the most well-known is the Triforce from The Legend Of Zelda. It's powers are pretty much mythology based, as it ends up being practically worthless in-game. Being solely a plot-device, I'd say it more than fits as a Mac Guffin.
- Only to the player. The source of Ganondorf and Zelda's powers are their pieces of the Triforce, and holding all three grants wishes. Link seems to be the only one unable to use it. It's been used as a Reset Button in A Link To The Past, though, and to change the entire setting in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass.
- The Legend of Zelda series loves to use these. Besides the Triforce, there are endless quests where Link has to gather pendants, pearls, Spiritual Stones, instruments, masks, metals, and pieces of armor.
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 BMW M3 from Need For Speed: Most Wanted counts as a MacGuffin: the entire career mode is about climbing through the Blacklist until you defeat Razor and recover he took away from you, it's pretty much as powerful as a fully tuned Ford Mustang, you only get to use it at the very beginning and at the very end, and also doubles as a Bragging Rights Reward for clearing 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.
The Chrono Trigger example can be extended to many console RPGs. As soon as the Rebellious Princess or Mysterious Waif joins the party, odds on you'll get their pendant/gem/other valuable heirloom too. The object's relevance varies wildly between actually useful in game (generally opening magical seals or an equippable item), ultimate cosmic plot power, true MacGuffin style object that everyone wants which is actually just junk, mentioned a handful of times in conversation, and an utterly irrelevant item that just clogs up your inventory. Of course, whichever it is, there's no way you'll avoid chasing after the damn thing if it gets lost or stolen.
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 posess 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.
- Then again, everyone would still think you were dead. And probably worse: Kid would still be around to butcher the English language.
  - More like butcher the Australian accent.
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.
The firespawn Blaze in the game 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.
- Also, Earth itself could be considered a MacGuffin in the entire series, as any other realm could've been used as the main conflict (and, in fact, battles with other realms have been featured, though the Earth/Outworld one is the focus of the series). Beyond "ultimate power", it's unknown just what specifications Earth has over other, more powerful realms (like Edenia) as a prime target for conquest.
- 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 eleventh level quest in the sarcastic MMORPG Kingdom Of Loathing is, quite literally, 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.
The Chaos Emeralds of Sonic The Hedgehog can be considered this - they're incredible power sources, but in only a few games are they ever used to power anything, and only some of them in those cases.
- They are used to power you. Get them all to obtain Super Mode.
The Water Chip and GECK from the Fallout games, are both classic examples of a MacGuffin, both of whoms main purposes is to get the player out of the starting area.
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 Xanatos Sucker 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...
In Splinter Cell: Pandora Tommorrow, the player character's first mission is to infiltrate an embassy being raided not 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 his 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.
The Amulet of Kings in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The entire main quest line revolves around getting the Amulet and the Emperor's son to the same place. Once you do, you get to see the ending sequence but not to participate in 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 (literally since she's a clone); the bastard just wanted to see what would happen if he held the last settlement of man Hostage For Mc Guffin.
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.
- the first part isn't entirely true, snake was explictly told what was on it when he was given the thing in the first place (all of the test data collected from Metal Gear REX's first practical real-world operations test), and no one else (save ocelot) knew he had it until snake was captured, which kinda disqualifies it for macguffin status.
Crysis Warhead, the entire game is chasing a MacGuffin. But with more explosions.
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.
Kingdom Hearts has the seven Princesses of Heart in the first game, although the heroes are only concerned with Kairi, who also serves as something of a Macguffin Girl 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. The titular Kingdom Heart itself serves as a Mac Guffin, however, as the organizations are all desperately seeking it, dispite not truly knowing what it is or what it does. 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 where all those hearts freed from The Heartless by the keyblade end up, collectively taking the form of a heart-shaped moon of immense mystic power. Organization XIII wants to use it to find their hearts and become whole, except for their leader, who wants the power.
- It's...the heart of all worlds. Xemnas and Ansem just exploit phenomena that cause doorways to it to physically manifest.
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.
Averted with the Secret of Monkey Island itself. Although mentioned frequently across the series, 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. Heck, 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.
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.
Planescape Torment has the Bronze Sphere as its primary MacGuffin. It becomes a Chekhovs Gun if you take it with you throughout the whole game and deduce the identity of the Good Incarnation.
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 even after they're betrayed by The7, 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.
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 MacGuffin(s) they need to collect this time.
The resonator from Gears Of War is an item that is supposedly able to 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.
The Fire Emblem from the Fire Emblem series takes the form of the local MacGuffin most of the time (the exception being 4/5, where it is mentioned in one conversation in the ending as a house sigil only).
The Amulet of Yendor in Net Hack.
Spyro games pretty much work off of this formula. In the first game, you unfreeze dragons. In the second, you collect orbs and talismans. In the third, you collect dragon eggs. You collect gems in all of them. Et al.
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.
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: "Mc Guffin object with mysterious powers and incredible value, considering they are lying around everywhere."

Marsh Rocket features a Pulp Fiction-style suitcase that drives the plot. It is revealed to contain tax papers for the IRS.
In Kevin And Kell, the original Danielle has disks with all the important data for "Rabbit's Revenge", an underground group with terroristic tendencies. The disks are shown in the June 21, 2003, strip, labeled "McGuffin disks".
In Absurd Notions, The Legendary Rock of Rama Lama is initially a MacGuffin (illustrated by Warren's remark), but ceases to be that when the players refuse to accept that.
On the cast page of Erfworld, the Arkenhammer's occupation is actually listed as "MacGuffin". (Strictly speaking, it isn't one: the Arkenhammer — or more precisely, the dwagons that have been tamed with its power — are critically important to the plot.) It also cracks walnuts rather well, though they occasionally turn into pigeons instead. Sometimes you need to tame a dwagon. Sometimes you just need to bust a nut.
The print version of Nodwick once did this while simultaneously parodying The Lord Of The Rings. The title character finds "This One Ring" and his employers force him to go on a long quest to destroy it. When they give history of the ring, it is remarked that ring does absolutely nothing, but they act as if the ring had infinite power.
Ancient sacred relic #7 in Hellbound.
Parodied in Megatokyo. Early on, Largo blows all his cash on a mysterious "cool thing". The exact extent of its abilities is never revealed, but it apparently at least has the power to call forth a legion of cardboard robots Largo created. Also joked about in one of the books, where author Piro comments that even he doesn't know what it does, and "Shirt Guy" Dom comments that the instant they figure it out, it'll be sold at the site's store within two weeks.
Lampshaded in Order Of The Stick, Xykon informs Redcloak that he literally only cares about the "MacGuffin", referring to the rift gates.
In Goats, Diablo convinces Bob and Neil to become art thieves:
Diablo: Ah. Here we are. The "Holy MacGuffin" is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Neil (or Bob): What's a MacGuffin?
Diablo: It's not really important.
Neil (or Bob): It sounds like a species of flightless waterfowl.
Bob (or Neil): Or a breakfast sandwich.
The glowing ball in Autumnside is a Mac Guffin which is at least semi-sentient.
In Captain SNES Alex is given a Mystic Mouse, which is supposedly an extremely powerful item. But he doesn't know how to use it and even openly refers to it as a "Mac Guffin".
The beginning of Gunnerkrigg Court, Chapter 23: "Terror Castle of the Jupiter Moon Martians", features a Macguffin parody. Within the simulator, the students are tasked with retrieving an Ancient Artifact from the aforementioned Terror Castle. Andrew Smith's order-inducing powers rewrite the simulation to make the artifact appear at his feet, thus ending the plot before it could even start, much to his and the other students' chagrin.
- And the readers' who where cheering at the idea of a new spacemonauts tale
As in the original Final Fantasy, 8-bit Theater's elemental orbs of light are the four pillars upon which the world depends upon which the Light Warriors have to collect for reasons unknown to them.
- Speaking of Final Fantasy, the Warring Triad from Final Fantasy VI. They're just petrified gods that are introduced out of nowhere to give Kefka godlike power. Then Kefka makes you fight them later on because...he...can...? Suffice it to say, the conclusion would have been no different if it were a magic paperclip.
Lampshaded in A Girl And Her Fed, though here's to hoping that they're not what we'd traditionally call a Mac Guffin, as they had better explain some things. Unless this is a hint from the writer that they won't...
Girl: Damn, we're juggling a load of Mac Guffins. And I've heard Mac Guffins are insanely high in calories... Get it? Muffin? Mac Guffin?"

The Project Orwell software in series 1 of KateModern, which is mysteriously absent from the second series.

Every other Uncle Scrooge Comic Story, and to a lesser extent, DuckTales, is essentially a search for a historical MacGuffin. It matters not whether the already-ultra-rich Mc Duck searches for the Golden Fleece, Solomon's Mines, the remnants of the Trojan Horse, the Crown of the Crusader Kings, the Candy-Striped Ruby etc. so much as it's something valuable for both him and Glomgold to get involved.
- Don Rosa's life stories of Scrooge Mc Duck make this even more explicit by detailing his adventures around in search of wealth, and the sharp downturn after he could just like back and manage it. The treasures he's now seeking are less important than the ability to zoom halfway across the planet to do it.
An episode of the Sam And Max Freelance Police cartoon revolved around the heroes chasing an FDA inspector, trying to feed him a sample of their favorite snack food so that he'll realize how delicious they are and lift the ban he's placed on them. The snack food? "Glazed MacGuffins".
Codename Kids Next Door, "Operation Report" refers to its MacGuffin as The Goods until practically the end of the story, where it turns out to just be a pizza they were suppose to get. But at least they actually reveal it... the mysterious ice cream flavor that Numbuh 5 and the Delightfuls were fighting over in "Operation Flavor" gets "name-cancelled" the only it's going to be mentioned when the others have phoned Numbuh 5.
In an episode of GI Joe, Shipwreck finds himself conscripted into entertaining a group of children while the other Joes guard a machine actually called "The Macguffin Device".
- In a nice touch, it's a MacGuffin in the trope sense as well; neither the Joes nor Cobra knows what the thing does, they just don't want the other side to have it.
  - In case, you were wondering, it brings the user's thoughts and imagination to life.
A Wacky Races-inspired episode of Teen Titans involves Robin's high-security suitcase. Its opening at the end is, of course, a textbook use of The Unreveal.
Taz-Mania did a story in the same vein, with secret agents chasing two Tasmanian Devils with a certain orange juice box, right down to ending on the opening of the container without revealing what's in it.
The Golden Disk in Transformers: Beast Wars started as a MacGuffin... but in the second season, it evolved out of that status, with Megatron demonstrating exactly what it was and why it was so dangerous in his hands.
The Anti-Life Equation in the Diniverse. Several villains, most notably Darkseid, want it, and the chase for it is a recurring plot point. The equation itself, on the other hand, is not: What it does remains undefined and the two who finally get their hands on it promptly vanish from this reality. (The comic book version, on the other hand, does define the Equation, and some of those seeking it have been able to use it. Basically, it is an empirical scientific formula which demonstrates the meaninglessness and futility of existence, which allows one to control the will of others entirely. Its ominous name comes from the idea that "if someone possesses absolute control over you - you're not really alive." Scott "Mr. Miracle" Free has known the Equation all along but chooses not to use it.)
The titular Black Cauldron
- In the book, on the other hand, the Cauldron was very much its own thing. Hen Wen, on the other hand, basically served to be chased and clashed over until finally doing something in the final book.
  - Actually, Hen Wen was only pursued in the first book and never seen past the first chapter or two in the middle three books.
In an American Idol parody episode of The Simpsons, the prize winner gets to star in their own "Itchy and Scratchy" episode. After that, it is never brought up again in the episode.
The entire plot of Kung Fu Panda, to an extent, revolves around the Dragon Scroll—who gets it, who deserves it, how and when it will be used. Tai Lung went to the Dark Side because he was not granted it, then spends twenty years in prison thinking of nothing else, escaping only when he learns it will be given to someone else. The Furious Five, meanwhile, all want it so they can stop the Big Bad and prove their worth to their master, while everyone from Shifu on down to Po believes the panda needs it and its ultimate power to win. And the final battle is literally an endless series of hot potato tosses back and forth around the village square, with Tai Lung and Po constantly in pursuit of each other to get the scroll back.
- The kicker? The scroll is blank, without any special secret written on it. The double kicker? What seems a worthless artifact is actually a reflective parchment geared to make Po gain the confidence to believe in the Be Yourself lesson. Tai Lung doesn't get it at all, and thinks it really is a worthless MacGuffin which he has wasted his whole life pursuing. The rage this discovery produces contributes strongly to Po's victory.
At least two episodes of Kim Possible revolve around a pure MacGuffin: in "Sick Day" it's "Ray X" which is repeatedly stolen and recovered when the players are incapacitated by a cold they pass to each other (and "Ray X" is revealed to be a cure for the common cold, after it has been destroyed). "Adventures In Rufus-Sitting" sees the Non Human Sidekick Rufus swallow a microchip - pursed by three villains and protected by Kim.
- Another is the Pan Dimensional Vortex Inducer. Dr. Drakken says outright that he only wants it because his rival Professor Dementor has it. No-one but Dementor and its inventors even know what it does until near the end.
Several episodes of The Secret Show revolve around the U.Z.Z. agents trying to prevent the theft of "The Secret Thing," which is so secret that nobody knows what it is or what it does, but everyone wants it just the same.
The Crystal Coconut in Donkey Kong Country is almost always in danger of being stolen by the Kremlings.
In an episode of The Adventures Of Super Mario Bros 3, Mario and friends have to keep a magic wand safe from the Koopas until the king it belongs to comes to pick it up.
The Phineas And Ferb episode 'Vanessesary Roughness" involves a four-way struggle between Perry the Platypus, Vanessa Doofenshmirtz and Ferb, Baljeet and Buford, and Candace to get a tube of "pizzazium infinionite".
- Lampshaded later in the aptly-titled episode "Finding Mary Mc Guffin", in which Phineas and Ferb track down Candace's lost Mary Mc Guffin doll. A line near the end makes it clear it's not a coincidence to boot, when a fight between Vanessa and Candace over the titular doll leads Ferb to comment, "This is exactly why they took that doll off the market."
Numerous episodes of Garfield And Friends mentioned the Klopman Diamond.
Just about every episode of Family Guy starts off with a different macguffin.

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