How to Use MacGuffin in a Sentence

MacGuffin

noun

• Who killed the president, and why, is a MacGuffin in the eight-episode thriller.
  — Gqlshare, Baltimore Sun, 29 Jan. 2025
• The movie’s MacGuffin is a key that Russ had hidden and that Hank finds.
  — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 28 Aug. 2025
• This too is a MacGuffin, as the detectives working the case admit the evidence does not add up.
  — David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 28 July 2022
• What was the process for capturing the awe, wonder, and mysticism of the central MacGuffin?
  — Josh Weiss, Forbes, 16 Dec. 2024
• Many titles took on technology, not just as a MacGuffin or Deus ex machina, but as an extension of us.
  — Thomas Page, CNN, 29 Jan. 2024
• But don’t forget that’s merely the MacGuffin, while the rapprochement between Leisl and her cad of a dad is the main attraction here.
  — Peter Debruge, Variety, 18 May 2025
• In extremis, the chair became the MacGuffin from a sub-Balzac novel of petit bourgeois succession.
  — Lucy Sante, Harper’s Magazine , 17 Aug. 2022
• The throughline here is a hunt for a MacGuffin known as the 752, named for the year of the Talamasca’s founding.
  — Alison Herman, Variety, 26 Oct. 2025
• Which may explain why several subplots feel half-realized, or why the main villain — there are several — feels more like a MacGuffin than a proper arch-foe.
  — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 31 May 2023
• The story’s MacGuffin is a manuscript that Eileen brings along to show off to Greenwood—of her forthcoming book, co-written with Thea.
  — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2025
• According to Deadline, the film was the MacGuffin in a bidding war between streamers, before landing at Netflix.
  — Vulture, 26 Nov. 2023
• And should the violent organization be in charge of the cold fusion MacGuffin everyone was chasing in Season 1?
  — Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 16 Dec. 2025
• The MacGuffin in question is a shiny orb that’s apparently a map to the location of Thrawn’s exile, or would be if Ahsoka could activate it.
  — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 Aug. 2023
• Its premise may seem mundane as a hunt for magical space rocks, the same MacGuffin plot device that drives most popular science fiction and fantasy today, from Marvel to Zelda.
  — Gene Park, Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2023
• For those of us allergic to exposition dumps about why some MacGuffin needs to be retrieved or delivered or destroyed, there’s a refreshing meaninglessness to the tasks handed down by Hihi.
  — Inkoo Kang, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2024
• Refusing to concede either the election or the loss of a silver bracelet on which the combination to his safe is printed, the fuming incumbent dispatches his private enforcer (Ving Rhames) to fetch the missing MacGuffin.
  — Peter Debruge, Variety, 1 Aug. 2024
• Some of the machinations are certainly predictable, especially for Westerners experiencing superhero fatigue over films that feature the pieces of some MacGuffin or other being assembled while the hero attempts to fulfill their fate.
  — Courtney Howard, Variety, 8 Sep. 2022