MacGuffin

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo in North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock used a narrative device in some of his films that he called a "MacGuffin." It is the thing that the characters care about, and that kicks off the plot, but the audience should not be concerned with it because it is ultimately irrelevant to the plot. 

He explained the term using a surreal anecdote about two men on a train, which he repeated in interviews for decades. Hitch claimed the term was a Scottish name, and he would tell the following joke to illustrate its inherent "emptiness."

Man A: "What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?"
Man B: "Oh, that’s a MacGuffin."
Man A: "What’s a MacGuffin?"
Man B: "Well, it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands."
Man A: "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands!"
Man B: "Well, then that’s no MacGuffin!" 

His point was that a MacGuffin is a purely mechanical element used to "trigger" the plot. 

Hitchcock’s personal favorite MacGuffin was the "government secrets" in North by Northwest. He called it his best because it was the emptiest. The hero asks what the villain is selling. The agent replies: "Oh, just government secrets." By refusing to even name the secrets, he proved that the object only exists to give the characters a reason to chase each other.

An additional origin note is that while Hitchcock popularized the term, he credited its creation to his friend and screenwriter Angus MacPhail. They likely chose the name because it sounded like a common Scottish surname, adding to the "nonsense" nature of the joke. Some film historians also point out that the word "guff" is British slang for "nonsense" or "empty talk," which fits the definition perfectly. 

Sometimes the MacGuffin is considered to be the same as a "red herring", but while both are plot devices used to manipulate the audience’s attention, they serve completely different structural purposes.

The MacGuffin is the motivation. It is the thing the characters are chasing. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as the characters want it badly enough to drive the story.

A non-Hitchcock example is the statue in The Maltese Falcon. Everyone is killing each other to find it, but it could have been any object that was considered valuable by the characters.

A red herring, as I have written earlier) is a clue, character, or plot point that is intentionally misleading. It’s designed to make you reach a false conclusion so that the eventual "twist" is more shocking.

In the Harry Potter book and movie series (especially in The Prisoner of Azkaban), we are led to believe that Sirius Black is a villain trying to kill Harry. Throughout much of the series, Snape is also seen as working to harm Harry, when in fact he is protecting him.

Red Herrings

 

The term "red herring" has an origin story that is, appropriately enough, a bit of a "red herring" itself. I was told long ago in some literature class that it came from the practice of using fish to distract hunting dogs. Turns out that is not true.

First, there is no such biological species as a "red herring." A red herring is a standard herring that has been heavily salted and smoked for a long period. This process turns the fish's flesh a reddish-brown color and gives it an incredibly strong, pungent odor. Before refrigeration, this was a common way to preserve fish so they would last for months.

The popular and false origin is that in the 17th century, escaped prisoners would drag a smelly red herring across a trail to confuse hunting hounds and lead them away from their scent.

However, modern etymologists have found no historical evidence that this was ever done by escapee or hunters trying to distract dogs. Actually, red herrings were sometimes used to train dogs or horses to stay on a scent or to get them used to distractions, not to trick them during a real hunt.

So, what is the true origin? The figurative meaning we use today in writing is that a red herring is something that intentionally misleads or distracts. It was popularized by an English journalist named William Cobbett in 1807. Cobbett wrote an article in his periodical, Political Register, where he told a story (perhaps true) about how he had used a red herring as a boy to lead a pack of hounds away from a hare. He used this story to attack the English press for prematurely reporting that Napoleon had been defeated. He accused the newspapers of using a "political red-herring" to distract the public from important domestic issues.

I've heard the term used in that way in 2025 and 2026 to explain how the Trump administration tries to distract the press and public from important issues by creating distractions.

Because Cobbett’s writing was so widely read, the metaphor stuck. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became a standard term in literature and mystery writing to describe a clue designed to lead the reader down the wrong path.