No MacGuffin, No Winner

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    "That's détente, comrade. You don't have it, I don't have it."
    —James Bond, For Your Eyes Only

    When a MacGuffin is removed entirely from the equation at the end story with neither side possessing it, resulting in the plot equivalent of a no-score draw with the heroes usually getting the Man Of The Match award. Not like it matters, though. The story has officially gone nowhere.

    This is often where a side chooses to destroy the MacGuffin to prevent the enemy from getting his or her hands on it.

    Occasionally An Aesop: when two children are fighting over something in Real Life the parents will often punish them by not letting either of them have it. (If it is an item they will lock it away, sometimes even give it away; if it was an event they will call it off.) This kind of punishment carries over to television where the futility of a fight is often demonstrated by having it to turn out to have been in vain, with the goal taken away the last minute or destroyed by the fighters themselves in the heat of the battle. In-universe this will often work amazingly well as a lesson where after a few moments of Lying in the Dirt Together the two former enemies will be inviting each other for drinks with no longer having a reason to fight, the whole business now a shared memory to look back on and laugh at. In real life, not so much - because, of course, it was the other kid's fault for starting the fight in the first place.

    Related to Status Quo Is God and Reset Button Ending, in those cases where keeping the MacGuffin would have a major effect on the work. If I Can't Have You is the Love Triangle equivalent.

    As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

    Examples of No MacGuffin, No Winner include:

    Anime and Manga

    • All three routes and four of the endings of Fate Stay Night end without the Grail being used. The one time it is used correctly, it... works. That's it. Then they close it. And nobody payed any attention afterward to the Artificial Human who can now only survive through lots of sex. Fate/Zero does the same thing when Emiya Kiritsugu could take it, but he realizes what it is and instead orders Saber to destroy it. When you look at the cast though, you'll notice that of all the Masters and Servants, only about four or five even really had a wish. By FSN, Kotomine just wants someone to use the Grail so he can learn about the nature of evil or something, and Zouken Matou wants the Grail to grant him immortality so he can live long enough to see the Grail used.

    Comic Books

    • Occurs in a number of Carl Barks comic books, notably The Seven Cities of Cibola, in which the titular cities are buried by rocks and the ducks and Beagle Boys all suffer amnesia and completely forget their existence. In general, whenever Scrooge McDuck and one of his enemies compete for a treasure, a significant percentage of the time, it will end up being destroyed or in the hands of a third party, usually a native population.
      • Subverted in Don Rosa's first duck story, The Son of the Sun, in which Scrooge and Flintheart Glomgold compete for the treasure of an ancient Inca temple. By the end of the story, the temple falls into a nearly bottomless volcanic lake. Flintheart is ready to call it a tie, but Scrooge isn't. He proceeds to buy the lake. The McGuffin is still irretrievable, but technically it's in Scrooge's possession, so he wins.
    • Also by Disney: an Italian Mickey Mouse story, not published in America, has an "Incan corkscrew," with a key inside that opens a doorway to a place where the "Sun sprouts." After opening the door, Mickey closes it instead of entering, and throws the key away, so the "secret remains with the Incans."
    • In issues 217 and 218 of Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog comics, Sonic and Bunnie find themselves stuck in the middle of a fight over an oil refinery. Unable to choose between helping the local Dark Egg Legion chapter (led by Bunnie's beloved uncle) and the local group of Freedom Fighters (a bunch of fanatic Jerk Asses), they ultimately decide to just destroy the refinery, keeping either side from getting control of it.
    • Heavily subverted in Grandville. Near the end of the story, the voice recording that all the characters fought over is shattered before anyone can hear its contents. The subversion comes from LeBrock behaving as if the recording is still intact and he was privy to its contents. The threat of revealing the recording, and using the few bits of information he has to back his bluff, is enough to drive The Prime Minister of Britain to suicide.

    Film

    • For Your Eyes Only -- James Bond chooses to chuck the ATAC off a cliff to prevent Soviet General Gogol getting his hands on it. Gogol has just wasted a considerable amount of resources on something he hasn't acquired, as well as losing several operatives. The British still have lost a spy trawler, at least three agents, one Lotus Espirit and the ATAC, but have denied the Russians the ability to turn their own missiles against them.
    • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- Although it's used to bring back Indy's dad, the Holy Grail ends up falling down a hole. Arguably, the former still gives Indy a slight lead in the points.
      • Similarly, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Ark of the Covenant is confiscated by the US government and put in a crate with multiple locks marked "Do Not Open Under Any Circumstances." Yet again, however, getting the girl and the opportunity to see Rene Belloq die in his moment of supposed triumph is still a plus.
    • The 2007 Transformers film has Sam chucking the All Spark on Megatron's spark, destroying the cube and killing the villain at the same time.
      • Though in the sequel the remains still have some power, and put the plot into motion (one piece teaches Sam about Cybertron and reactivates Jetfire, and another resurrects Megatron).
    • The conclusion of the film Wishmaster depends on this: the protagonist is forced to make a third wish in order to stop the one djinn's rampage against her and her friends, but if she does he (and all the other djinn) will be freed to terrorize Earth. So she makes a wish that prevents the accident which caused the djinn's gem to be found in the first place in a Reset Button Ending.
    • The battle segment of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ends with Blondie and Tuco destroying the bridge (a Third Option the captain had suggested earlier) so that the armies will go elsewhere.
    • The Maltese Falcon: Both sides discover at the same time that the Black Bird is a fake.
    • In Roman Polanski film Frantic Harrison Ford ends up throwing the MacGuffin, a small electronic switch used in the detonators of nuclear devices, into the river, so neither the Arabs or the Israelis get it.
    • In The Rocketeer, both the US government and the Nazis are trying to get their hands on the rocketpack. In the end, Cliff surreptitiously sabotages the rocketpack to prevent the lead Nazi agent making his getaway with it, and both Nazi and rocketpack go up in smoke. Although Cliff's friend Peevey has drawn plans for a new and improved version.
    • It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: The suitcase containing the $350,000 gets accidentally opened and the money falls into the streets below.

    Literature

    • The titular Silmarils from The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien. After 500 years of epic battle over the jewels, they are literally removed from the playing field. One is thrown into the sea, one ends up in the bowels of the Earth, and one in the heavens. Even the Valar don't have benefit of them, since they are no longer able to use their light to revive the Two Trees of Valinor.
    • The Sampo in the Finnish national epic Kalevala ends up in the bottom of the ocean.
    • In The Elenium trilogy by David Eddings, Sparhawk and his companions spend the first two books chasing around after a large magical sapphire called the Bhelliom. Because of its powerful properties, the Bhelliom is sought by an evil god and his minions; a deformed troll named Ghwerig, who owned the jewel at one time, is trying to recover it; the Elene church, whom the Knights serve, also wants to lock it up; and as the sapphire had once been part of the crown jewels of the kingdom of Thalesia, they'd like it back. In the end, after they've done what they need to do with it, the goddess Aphrael has Sparhawk throw it into a distant ocean.
    • The Elder Wand from Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows cannot be beaten in direct combat, has power much greater than that of a standard wand, and will only work for whoever defeats its previous master. Many witches and wizards have killed for it, but as the wand places its owner in constant danger Harry chooses not to accept it, probably hoping that nobody with the ambition of getting the wand figures out that he's the current master and goes after him.
    • Nest in Angel Fire East by Terry Brooks convinces the main villain that the unstable MacGuffin had self-destructed. She is lying.
    • Inverted in The Tightrope Men by Desmond Bagley, where the McGuffin every intelligence agency has been fighting over is deliberately leaked to the Soviets to maintain the balance of power (e.g. to prevent humanity from "falling off" the tightrope).
    • Taken to its full cruelty potential in The Paul Street Boys, where two boy groups are fighting over the ownership of an empty building site that they use as a playground. The conflict gets completely out of hand, and in the climax a fever-stricken Ernő Nemecsek, the plucky underdog of his team, shows up to protect the playground at the cost of his life. When the boys return to the site they learn that engineers have started building an apartment building on it.
    • Strange example in Skybreaker. The original MacGuffin is the wealth on board a ghost ship created by the inventor of more or less everything used in airships. Once they arrive, they can't find any of the expected money. Instead, the new MacGuffin is a fusion reactor and associated blueprints. That ends up at the bottom of the ocean, but the heroes end up with a Santa Sack of gold.

    Live Action TV

    Music

    Real Life

    Video Games

    • In Final Fantasy XI, the San d'Orian missions end with the Weapon of Mass Destruction being taken to the afterlife by the ghost of King Ranperre.
    • One of the Demons' games in the Xanth series involved a prize which was in the end destroyed by the protagonist in order to prevent the other side from getting it.
    • Laharl quite literally eats a mystical herb in Disgaea 2, which apparently had wondrous powers that would have allowed the heroes to easily defeat Big Bad Xenon (or at least re-power Etna so she can curb stomp the bastard).
    • Used somewhat in the first case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations when Young Phoenix Wright consumes a necklace that was used by Dahlia Hawthorne to poison a certain lawyer a few years back, which would have proved Dahlia guilty of the poisoning by examining the trace amounts of poison in the necklace. Of course, Mia solves the case anyway.
    • One of the possible endings in Dubloon. Your crew compensates with "a bond more valuable than the chest," however.
    • In one City of Villains mission, an Arbiter sends you to destroy a MacGuffin so that two Arachnos factions will stop fighting over it. (He specifically mentions the 'two kids fighting over a toy' analogy.) The souvenir you get from this mission is the MacGuffin, which you kept for yourself.
    • Before the final battle in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, the King of Hyrule touches the completed Triforce and wishes it away. As a result, the game's villain is unable to claim it. Link and Zelda are then tasked to found a new Hyrule and move on forward without the Triforce.
    • Played with in one ending of Devil Survivor. Gin's ending is what happens when you cross this with Omnicidal Neutral; you (in most cases) could have taken control of Babel, but instead you destroy it and send the demons back to where they came from. It's not a completely straight example because your other enemies are dead anyway, however.

    Western Animation

    • In Xiaolin Showdown, Omi prefers to get rid of the Tiger claws by sending them to the core of earth rather than having Katnappe getting them. He recovers them several episodes later when they are needed again, though.
      • Master Fung does something similar with a jade elephant to teach the kids a lesson. They learn it; when he offers another go with a different statue at the end, they wisely refuse.
      • The Hidoku Mouse, which is a Shen Gon Wu said to undo mistakes, which unfortunately for both the heroes and the villains, actually fell into a volcanic pit full of giant spiders and is presumably destroyed.
    • A Stitch in Time from Kim Possible ended with the destruction of the Time Monkey Idol, thus causing a Reset Button Ending to the entire movie.
    • Third season of Jackie Chan Adventures: Jackie attempts to destroy the MacGuffins of the first season by firing a laser at them. It only destroys the *physical* talismans - their powers seek out new hosts, setting the third season Macguffin-hunt in motion.
      • Also in one episode he says of the current MacGuffin "This is too dangerous to be in a museum," and smashes it.
    • The resolution of the DuckTales (1987) episode Master of the Djinni. Archenemies Scrooge and Glomgold discover a Jackass Genie and compete for the rest of the episode over who is to be its master. Glomgold wins the contest and immediately abuses his newfound power, but when he fails to watch his choice of words around the genie, he ends up stuck in the same predicament he wished Scrooge into, causing him to "wish he'd never found that blasted lamp." The episode resets, only this time, the Vault of Aladdin caves in, leaving the lamp (and its occupant) buried for eternity.
    • Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon." Both the Starfleet personnel and the Kzinti renegades want to get the titular Lost Technology because of its awesome power: a beam that causes total conversion of matter into energy.

    Sulu: It would have looked nice in some museum.
    Spock: It never would have reached a museum, Lieutenant. There was too much power in that one setting. If not the Kzinti, the Klingons or some other species would have tried to possess it.

    • In the conclusion of A Knight of Shadows, J'onn destroys the MacGuffin because "the price was too great" to give in to temptation to use it or hand it over to the episode's Big Bad.
    • Done unintentionally in the Transformers episode "The Golden Lagoon". The MacGuffin is a lake that makes any Transformer who bathes in it temporarily invincible. By the time the Autobots and Decepticons finish battling over it, both the lake and the entire area in which the lake is located have been destroyed. Beachcomber, who had originally found the lake, looks at the devastation and bitterly declares that they had won.
    • The Encryptor Chip from Cyberchase. Because the original Chip has been destroyed by The Hacker's virus on Mother Board, Dr. Marbles has since been desperate in search for a new one. Unfortunately, whenever a new Encryptor Chip shows up, it's always destroyed in the end.
    • In the second to last storyline of Season3 Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Osi Sobeck Prison Warden of the Citadel attempted to pull this by killing Captain Tarkin, who carried half of the coordinates of a secret hypetspace-route. He was saved by Ahsoka.
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