MacGuffin
McGuffin
A plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or another motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. The MacGuffin's importance to the plot is not the object itself, but rather its effect on the characters and their motivations.
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Origin
English screenwriter Angus MacPhail coined the term during the production of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935). Hitchcock later explained it with a joke: a man on a train asks about a package overhead and is told it is "an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands" — but there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands. He recounted the anecdote in a 1939 Columbia University lecture and again in his 1966 interviews with François Truffaut.
Updated February 22, 2026