For movie fans who have ever heard the terms MacGuffin or Red Herring when referring to a storytelling device and thought to themselves “what does that mean” or “what’s even the difference,” this may offer an explanation.

What do these terms mean? A MacGuffin, sometimes called a McGuffin, is an object in a movie that is very important to the characters but is useless itself. A MacGuffin could also be an event that is significant to the plot, but later serves no purpose and becomes irrelevant. An example would be the briefcase from Pulp Fiction, or even the Ring from The Lord of the Rings. And a Red Herring is commonly used in thrillers or mysteries. It is a literary device used to intentionally mislead readers and viewers, or give false clues—distracting them from what is actually happening in an attempt to surprise the audience or keep them guessing. An example would be the top in Inception, which still has fans guessing at what the true meaning of the film was, or the unopened FedEx package in Cast Away which is as equally intriguing as the top.

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A Red Herring could also be a false or uniformed perspective, like when the protagonist (who the audience projects themselves onto) doesn’t have all the information and has an opinion based on their limited understanding. In Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius Black is portrayed as a dangerous criminal who has escaped prison, and Harry believes Sirius Black is coming after him to murder him—just like he did to Harry’s parents.

Harry Potter Missing Games

However, the audience is just as shocked as Harry is when he finds out Sirius Black is actually Harry’s godfather and ally. A Red Herring is usually meant to make a story more fun and mysterious, where a MacGuffin might drive the plot, but it’s just a way to progress the story for the audience. Despite being unimportant to the audience’s understanding of the story, the MacGuffin is usually the entire purpose of a movie, but it by itself is not really that significant.

The term MacGuffin was first used by the English screenwriter, Angus MacPhail—who is most known for his work with director Alfred Hitchcock. Though the term was coined by MacPhail, it was Alfred Hitchcock who popularized the term within the language of the movie world. One of Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite storytelling devices was the MacGuffin because it could be used to create suspense. However, during a lecture at Colombia University in 1939, Hitchcock said, “So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.”

Hitchcock also said MacGuffins are in “most movies about spies.” In a movie, a MacGuffin is the thing the spies are after or that the characters worry about, but the audience doesn’t care about it. It is usually introduced in the first act of a film, but during the film it may be ignored until the climax (when it is useful to the story again to build suspense), and then forgotten by the end of the movie again. The Ring in The Lord of the Rings is very important to the characters because they need to destroy it, but the Ring itself is mostly forgotten until it is needed to build suspense.

Norman Bates in the final shot of Psycho

An example of a Red Herring can also be found in the musical score or soundtrack in a movie or show. When violins or other high-pitched frequency instruments have a constant build up in sound, it may suggest something evil is lurking nearby or that a jump scare is coming. But sometimes, these musical Red Herrings are just used to create suspense, though there is no threat, so an audience will have more fun and stay on their toes. An example of this can be found in almost any horror movie, including Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho. Another great Red Herring in Psycho (other than the music) was the misdirecting clues that painted Norman Bates in a good-guy role and his mother in the role as the murderer—when in reality, Norman was the one who was pretending to be his mother.

The Mist, based on a Stephen King novella and directed by Frank Darabont, has a Red Herring of its own in the final scene of the movie, where the main character (who had just killed his son and friends after they believed the world had ended and there was no hope) thinks a monster is about to come out of the mist to end his suffering. But it is actually the military coming to help clean up their own mess, and the father has to continue life without his son.

More shocking Red Herrings include the one in Knives Out, where the least suspecting character turns out to be the killer in a game of Clue, or when the dead body in Saw (2004) stood up and was revealed to be the killer, Jigsaw. One of the most famous MacGuffins in literature is the Holy Grail, which was the cup used by Jesus Christ in the Last Supper from the Bible. The Holy Grail is seen in many films, most notably Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Both terms are used to describe objects or events that are not important themselves but may create suspense.

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