One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?"
And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin."
The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?"
"Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands."
The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,"
and the other one answers,
"Well then, that's no MacGuffin!"
Alfred Hitchcock
Director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term MacGuffin and the technique with his 1935 film The 39 Steps, in which the MacGuffin is some otherwise incidental military secrets.[12][13] Hitchcock explained the term MacGuffin in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University in New York City:
It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin." The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers, "Well then, that's no MacGuffin!" So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.
