A MacGuffin is the object everyone in the story is chasing, whose actual nature doesn't matter to the story.
Angus MacPhail, screenwriter, originated it; Alfred Hitchcock popularised it and credited MacPhail.
// Where it sits
Load-bearing and hollow at the same time — which is a genuinely strange thing for a plot element to be.
What it really means
Hitchcock told the same story for thirty years, and it's the clearest definition anyone has managed.
Two men are on a train. One notices a package on the luggage rack and asks what it is. That's a MacGuffin, says the other. What's a MacGuffin? It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands. But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands. Well then, that's no MacGuffin.
The joke is the definition. A MacGuffin is whatever the characters are chasing, and its actual nature is irrelevant — because the story isn't about the thing, it's about the chasing. The uranium, the microfilm, the formula, the unopened briefcase. Remove it and the plot collapses; explain it and nothing improves.
Which makes it the exact inverse of a red herring, though the two get swapped constantly. A red herring misleads the audience and could be cut without damage. A MacGuffin misleads nobody — everyone can see it's a pretext — and cannot be cut, because it's the engine.
One credit worth restoring. Hitchcock didn't coin it. The word is credited to the screenwriter Angus MacPhail, and Hitchcock — who told the lion-trap anecdote at Columbia in 1939 and again to Truffaut in 1966 — was its populariser rather than its inventor. He explained it so memorably that the attribution fell off somewhere along the way — which is a fairly MacGuffin-ish fate for the word's actual origin.
Where it comes from
The surname behind the word is Ulster Irish — Mc- 'son of' + dubh 'black' + Fionn 'fair-headed' — though other accounts trace it instead to 'guff', meaning something trivial or worthless. Either way the choice was arbitrary: Angus MacPhail coined the term and Hitchcock made it famous, which is itself the joke.
Myths & misconceptions
Hitchcock coined it.
He credited the screenwriter Angus MacPhail. Hitchcock was the populariser, not the inventor — and he said so, repeatedly, which makes the misattribution slightly ungracious.
A MacGuffin is a red herring.
A MacGuffin motivates the characters and is structurally load-bearing — remove it and there's no plot. A red herring exists to mislead the audience and can be cut without consequence. They're near-opposites.
Compare & contrast
MacGuffin vs red herring
The MacGuffin drives the plot while being meaningless in itself. The red herring is meaningful-looking while driving nothing. One is essential and empty; the other is inessential and full of apparent significance.
| // | MacGuffin | Red herring |
|---|---|---|
| Drives the plot | Yes | No |
| Misleads audience | No | Yes |
| Can be removed | No | Yes |
| Characters care | Enormously | Incidentally |
How it connects
- Red Herringthe device it's most often confused with, working the opposite way.
- Chekhovs Guna MacGuffin is a gun everyone chases and nobody needs to fire.
Tell it apart
Questions people ask
- What's the train anecdote?
- Two men on a train. One asks about a package on the luggage rack. The other says it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands. 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin.' The point is that the MacGuffin is nothing — it just has to be something the characters want.
- Is it McGuffin or MacGuffin?
- Both are attested; MacGuffin is the standard form. The name was chosen arbitrarily, which is consistent with the concept.
- Does it have to be an object?
- No — a document, a formula, a person or an entirely undefined goal all work, provided the audience doesn't need to care what it actually is. The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is never opened on screen, and doesn't need to be.