History Main / MockGuffin

* The [[spoiler:fake Garnet Star]] in ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'', much to Bowser's chagrin. The [[spoiler:fake Gold Star on the Champ's Belt in Chapter 3]] also qualifies.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* On ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' Spike and Harmony are searching for the Gem of Amara, a relic that makes vampires invulnerable. They find it in a tomb full of jewelry and other artifacts. Spike thinks it's a huge gaudy necklace and puts it on. Moments later he tries to kill Harmony in a fit of rage only to discover when he fails that the real Gem was a relatively nondescript ring that Harmony had put on.

* One arc of ''ComicBook/{{Hitman}}'' has Tommy and Natt getting involved in a bloody dispute over a recently found coffin full of cash from the Civil War. [[spoiler:In the end, all involved find out that it was full of Confederate dollars, worthless and largely ruined by the years]].

* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' has [[spoiler:the Ankaran Sarcophagus that the entire game revolves around. Everybody thinks it contains some primevally ancient vampire that will usher in the apocalypse. Instead, [[ShaggyDogStory it contains a crapton of C4]], courtesy of [[MagnificentBastard Smiling Jack]]. He's shown sharing a drink with the sarcophagus' previous occupant, an ordinary mummy, as he watches the idiot who opened it go up in flames.]]

* In ''Manga/DragonBall'', the Sacred Water gives you super strength according to legend, but first Goku must climb the StarScraper that is Karin's Tower, which takes several days, and then he spends three more days snatching the jug from the very agile Karin. Upon drinking it however, Goku finds that he doesn't feel any different: Karin reveals that Goku's exertions climbing the tower and getting it from him were all that was needed. Crosses over with SecretTestOfCharacter when Tao Pai-Pai visits: Karin can tell immediately that he's not a good person and just gives him the tap water without any fuss, and even gives him a dark Nimbus cloud for the trip down, so that he doesn't become any stronger. Several story arcs later, Karin reveals he ''does'' have water that can make someone stronger, but it overwhelmingly just kills whoever drinks it, so he [[GodzillaThreshold saved it until the situation was desperate]].

* ''Literature/FoucaultsPendulum'': The mysterious list Col. Ardenti leaves the protagonists. Either it's [[spoiler: the Knights Templars' key to harnessing the Tulluric currents that can reshape the face of the world, or a shopping list.]] Trying to get a definitive answer out of this book is [[UnreliableNarrator rather]] [[SanitySlippage missing]] [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness the point]].

* ''Series/ModernFamily'': The episode "Message Received" has Mitchell and Cameron going to sell their most valuable belongings to pay for their wedding, with Cameron's being a belt buckle given to him by his grandfather who supposedly got it from Wyatt Earp. The appraiser secretly tells Mitchell that the belt buckle is actually worthless, with tons of them being sold at a gas station chain in the sixties, meaning that Cameron's grandfather's story about him meeting Wyatt Earp was a lie. Subverted in that Cameron admits that he had suspected that it was all a lie anyway as [[SpottingTheThread he noticed that the dates in his grandfather's story didn't add up]]. Then he talks about how a compass he also got from his grandfather that he supposedly got from Amelia Earhart is most likely a fake too.

* ''ComicBook/XMenNoir: Mark of Cain'' reimagines the titular mutant superheroes as a gang of hired mercs looking for the fabled [[MythologyGag gem of Cytorrak]] in the jungles of Madripoor. It eventually turns out to be a worthless fake made of glass. However, [[spoiler: the BigBad actually knew this all along. He was planning to use the fake gem to wrest control of Madripoor from the natives so that he could use it as a prison for creating brainwashed agents to beat the Soviets. ItMakesSenseInContext]].

* Doble subverted in the ''ComicBook/MortandPhil'' comic La caja de los diez cerrojos. After going to great lenghs to open a misterious safebox, it happens to have a giant jack in a box toy, so angry they throw it to the ocean...and it turns out that inside the jack in a box there was a giant diamond.

* One ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' arc had Calvin trying to find dinosaur bones in his yard. He ended up digging up a bunch of random trash, but until his mother pointed it out, he had ''no idea'' that there was something fishy about the "Calvinosaur" having a bottle for a skull, tin cans for a spine, and forks for arms.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/{{Lockout}}'', the sought-after briefcase turns out to be empty and the actual information is hidden in the lighter that Snow had the entire time.

* In ''Film/DartagnansDaughter'', much of the plot is driven by characters misinterpreting a laundry list and a really bad love poem as secret coded messages, and acting upon what they think these 'messages' are telling them to do.

* ''Film/TheMalteseFalcon1941'' is something of a subversion, as the fake one in the movie was substituted by the legitimate owner to prevent theft of the real one. At least, that's what Gutman thinks, but really there's no evidence either way. Maybe the legitimate owner always had a fake. Maybe there never ''was'' a real one. (Apparently, no-one has ever tried to scratch off the black enamel to see if it's really gold underneath before.) In what's perhaps a subversion of the subversion, a sequel, ''The Black Bird'', has Sam Spade Jr. (George Segal) getting involved with a new group of motley villains looking for the statue that his father kept all these years. [[spoiler: Turns out the "lead" was a coating over the real golden bird.]]
* In part of ''Film/NationalTreasure'', Ben Gates buys two copies of the Declaration of Independence at the gift shop (one of them is the real thing that the clerk believes to be a replica, the other a replica). They both become useful; when Ian and his cronies are trying to steal the real one from Gates, he throws them the fake to buy some time.
* ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'' does this twice with Belloq:
** It's first {{discussed|trope}} by Belloq as his main motivation for finding artifacts for profit rather than to send to museums. He muses over how most of the things they find were actually ''worthless'' in their day, and are now only "valuable", so valuable that people ''kill each other'' over them, because they are old:

** Next it plays with this trope and then subverts it in the last scene. [[spoiler:After performing the invocation ritual, Belloq opens the Ark and finds it to be just a box full of sand. Toht walks away laughing... and ''then'' God's fury comes out of it unleashed.]]
* In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'', when choosing a grail from the many ones in the Grail Chamber, Donovan defers to Elsa as he says he has no way of knowing which (of dozens) could be it. She chooses an large, ornate, gold-covered chalice, which she gives him. After drinking from it, Donovan learns the hard way that he "chose poorly." Indy finds a small, wooden cup painted with gold, which he realizes is "the cup of a carpenter."
* In ''Film/{{Duplicity}}'', the formula for a baldness cure that Claire and Ray are trying to steal (ostensibly for their boss, but really for themselves) [[spoiler: turns out to just be a formula for an ordinary skin cream...excuse me, lotion]].
* The cooler in ''[[{{Film/Crank}} Crank: High Voltage]]'' that Chelios assumes contains his heart. [[YouDoNotWantToKnow Whatever was really in there...]]
-->'''Chelios''': What kind of sick freak carries around something like that in a box? [[ThatMakesMeFeelAngry I am shocked to my fucking core]]. You have got some serious problems, motherfucker.

* ''Film/TheGiantSpiderInvasion'' includes a tiny subplot about the "geodes" (diamond-like rock shells) the invading spiders arrive in. One character takes some geode fragments to his diamond-broker cousin to have them appraised, only to be told that the diamond is "industrial quality".
* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'': In the ActionPrologue, Indiana Jones and Basil Shaw are trying to recover the Lance of Longinus (a.k.a. the Spear of Destiny): the lance that pierced the side of Jesus as he hung on the cross during his crucifixion. The Nazis have recovered the Lance from a fortress in France and loaded it on a treasure train bound for Berlin. However, the Nazi expert realises that the Lance is a replica because [[AnachronisticClue it is made of an alloy not available in Roman times, and the engraving on it is too recent]]. Indy comes to the same conclusion as soon as he gets his hands on it. However, in his researches, Voller discover something even more valuable; the Antikythera, which becomes the main MacGuffin of the film.

* Literature/TheRadix: Edgar Wurm made a fake Radix. Initially he just wanted to show Brynstone what to look for, but later the fake played a significant role in the story.

* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
** The novel ''Millennium Falcon'' is an extended homage to ''The Maltese Falcon''. Guess what the "Lost Treasure of the Old Republic" turns out to be. In the case of ''Millennium Falcon'', it's even more annoying than usual. This "lost treasure" was supposedly left in the dying days of the Republic as something that would critically undermine Palpatine. Once the treasure is revealed, it pretty clearly demonstrates how inept and impotent Palpatine's opposition must've been. The quest to locate the "lost treasure" ends up being an ItsTheJourneyThatCounts moment for Han, Leia, and their granddaughter, however.
** In the ''Enemy Lines'' duology, the New Republic forces make use of a Mock Guffin to lure the Yuuzhan Vong into a trap, by creating a quartet of flyable, but otherwise nonfunctional ships, and faking a test firing so that they appear to be a new superweapon.

* In ''Literature/TheVorGame'', Miles finds a body wedged in a drain pipe, who had drowned when the pipe filled up during a storm. Investigating why the man was in the pipe in the first place, he figures out that the dead man had intended to retrieve a package he had stored in a different pipe, only he had entered the wrong pipe, got stuck, and drowned. Miles finds the package and opens it, revealing... some home-baked cookies that the dead soldier had been hiding from his barracks-mates.

* ''Running Blind'' by Desmond Bagley. The protagonist is a retired spy coerced into delivering a mysterious electronic circuit during a trip to Iceland to see his girlfriend. He finds himself being pursued by a former KGB adversary, and comes to realise that the man who gave him the assignment is a KGB mole. After he and his girlfriend nearly get killed on several occasions, he exposes TheMole and delivers the package, only to be told he was supposed to let the KGB have it -- the circuit actually does nothing; it was designed to waste the time of Soviet researchers. Of course thanks to their mole the KGB knew that anyway; they were just going through the motions to keep his cover.
* ''Literature/FoucaultsPendulum'': The mysterious list Col. Ardenti leaves the protagonists. Either it's [[spoiler: the Knights Templars' key to harnessing the Tulluric currents that can reshape the face of the world, or a shopping list.]] Trying to get a definitive answer out of this book is [[UnreliableNarrator rather]] [[SanitySlippage missing]] [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness the point]].
* The treasure map in ''Literature/{{Below}}'' is one, except that Brenish and Naman know it's a fake from the beginning. They get pulled into [[DungeonCrawling the quest]] anyway, because the forger who made it was too good and their boss Gareth is too obsessed. Brenish spends much of the quest trying to steer Gareth towards a fallback plan that would let them survive TheReveal.

** Another episode has them find a talking parrot on the island that keeps mentioning jewels. Believing it belonged to a pirate who buried treasure on the island they spend the whole episode trying to find out where the treasure is. Only to learn that its former owner fed it "jewel" brand crackers and it had been giving its version of "polly want a cracker" the whole time.

* In the fifth season episode of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' entitled "Destiny," Angel and Spike beat the living crud out of each other in their race to drink from the Cup of Eternal Torment. The cup turned out to have a "Made in China" sticker on the bottom and was filled with Mountain Dew.
* On ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' Spike and Harmony are searching for the Gem of Amara, a relic that makes vampires invulnerable. They find it in a tomb full of jewelry and other artifacts. Spike thinks it's a huge gaudy necklace and puts it on. Moments later he tries to kill Harmony in a fit of rage only to discover when he fails that the real Gem was a relatively nondescript ring that Harmony had put on.
* In ''Series/SeaQuestDSV,'' Krieg discovers a cache of glowing gems on the ocean floor and hoards as many as he can aboard ship...only to discover that they're bioluminescent ''fish poop,'' which trades its glow for an unbearable smell as it ''melts.''
* An episode of ''Series/{{Bones}}'' has the eponymous scientist thinking she's stumbled across this. A prop sword is treated as much more valuable than its component parts simply because the movie it appeared in is so popular. As with much of anything, Bones does not understand why it is so. Probably because people seem willing to kill for the damned thing. The movie was not so much popular as known to be the first Arthurian film ever made (or one of the first). This made the sword valuable as a part of film history.
* Similar to the "Al Capone's Vault" case, ''Series/KenanAndKel'' once found a map to a secret safe (albeit Kel insisted it read "sofa"). Following the map's instructions, they eventually found and opened the safe, and found [[spoiler: a sofa. Kenan was understandably disappointed but Kel actually liked the sofa (and the fact he was right).]]

* The basis of Captain Jack Harkness' time-traveling scam in ''Series/DoctorWho''. He found an empty space-ambulance, tossed it past Rose and the Doctor (he thought they were Time Agents) and crashed it in London in the middle of the Blitz. The plan was that he would pass it off as a warship ([[LoopholeAbuse they have ambulances in wars]]!), charge an exorbitant amount for it, take half in advance, and the ship would be "coincidentally" hit by a German bomb before the agents could realize they'd bought junk. It all goes wrong because the ship wasn't empty; it was full of confused "nanogenes" that started acting as TheVirus and nearly consumed humanity.
* ''Series/BlueBloods'': The titular CoolCar in ''The Film/{{Bullitt}} Mustang''. The owner, who purchased the ''real'' Bullitt Mustang soon after the movie, bought a second '68 Mustang from a used-car lot a week later and had it modified to be identical to the Bullitt car to be used as a decoy to prevent it from being stolen. When he died, he willed the real car to his wife, swearing her to secrecy over it. He then (separately) gave the decoy to his son while also keeping him oblivious to the fact that it was just a decoy in case his rather needy son decided to blab about his ownership of the car for attention, sell it for some quick cash or have it "stolen" to collect the insurance payout, [[ProperlyParanoid all of which the son did later in life]].
* ''Series/RedDwarf'': In "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonXEntangled Entangled]]", the crew attempt to get out of giving Rimmer and Starbug to the [=BEGG=]s by invoking this trope, attempting to pass off an ordinary spoon as "The Spoon of Destiny", capable of controlling the universe. Unfortunately for them, the [=BEGG=]s see right through it.

* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireI'' does this with Karn. On a quest to find the hand book that will teach him how to become the greatest thief ever, he has to walk through a trap filled pyramid. When he finally gets to the end, all that it says is 'If you made it this far, you are already the world's greatest thief.'
* ''Videogame/ShadowrunReturns'' has one with the [[spoiler:100,000 nuyen reward offered by the late Sam Watts, which he just doesn't have]]. The significance of it depends entirely on [[spoiler:whether the player wants to avenge Sam for the reward, or for justice.]]
* The thief's storyline in the ''VideoGame/QuestForGlory'' series, in an obvious homage to ''The Maltese Falcon'', has you run into several fake versions of "The Black Bird", though only the one in [[VideoGame/QuestForGloryII the second game]] really fits this trope; as you have to steal it for Signor Ferrari, who then realizes it's a fake. The fakes you find in the [[VideoGame/QuestForGloryIII third]] and [[VideoGame/QuestForGloryIV fourth]] games are mostly [[EasterEgg Easter Eggs]], and in [[VideoGame/QuestForGloryV the fifth game]] you can finally get the real Black Bird, which finally serves as a proper MacGuffin (though you can still make a fake to give to Ferrari and pocket the real one yourself).
* The [[spoiler:fake Garnet Star]] in ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'', much to Bowser's chagrin. The [[spoiler:fake Gold Star on the Champ's Belt in Chapter 3]] also qualifies.

* In ''VideoGame/ForeverHome'', the Union Stone is supposed to be able to work with the Past Stone and Future Stone to fix a mistake from the past. [[spoiler:The Union Stone actually does nothing of the sort, though the BadFuture versions of Xero mistakenly believe that it allows them to send their thoughts to the past. In reality, Xero himself is capable of time travel without the stones due to his connection to the Aeon Prism.]]
* A RunningGag in ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' is dimension-hopping warrior Gilgamesh's search for the legendary blade Excalibur. Unfortunately, he tends to instead find the Excalipoor, a JokeItem that looks exactly like Excalibur but is nigh-on worthless in combat. He tends to have attacks with it shuffled into his usual attack routine; they always do 1 damage. It can also be wielded by the player, and when held, it tends to show in the ''stat screen'' that it boosts your attacking power to ridiculous amounts... but it's still hardcoded to do 1 damage, so that's pointless.

* Creator/AdultSwim's [[OneEpisodeWonder unsold pilot]] ''WesternAnimation/KorgothOfBarbaria'' features this in its main plot. Korgoth is caught in a PoisonAndCureGambit and sent to retrieve the "golden goblin", a relic of a bygone age, from the tower of powerful wizard after the wizard seemingly disappears. After a dangerous trip that includes massive geographic obstacles, [[WhenTreesAttack being attacked by living trees]], dealing with [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever 50 foot tall]] [[GiantFlyer pigeons]], and finding that the wizard is very much alive and not happy about the intrusion, the legendary golden goblin turns out to be a cheap, kitschy figurine that plays tinny music and dances when a button is pushed.
* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' episode "The Silver Falcon", in an homage to ''The Maltese Falcon,'' features a crime boss attempting to steal a trove of hidden diamonds. The first place he digs up contains a mocking note informing him he dug in the wrong place, and the second location he searches has a stash of diamonds that turn out to be fake.

* ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'' has the Medal from Hero's Duty. It is the initial catalyst to the movie's plot and possession of it drives a significant chunk of the conflict. It represents Ralph's shallow wish for fulfillment of his desires, but ultimately proves to be an illusion, a lie which causes great damage to be done both to Ralph's own game and to all the games he's visited. It is only after Ralph rejects that lie (i.e. throwing it against the game screen) that he discovers King Candy's deception (the "Out Of Order" sign taped on the other side of the screen falls off and reveals Vanellope is on the side of the ''Sugar Rush'' cabinet. At this point, it ceases to be relevant and is never seen again.) and the way to correct his mistakes and become the person he truly wants to be.

* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' has [[spoiler: the Ankaran Sarcophagus that the entire game revolves around. Everybody thinks it contains some primevally ancient vampire that will usher in the apocalypse. Instead, [[ShaggyDogStory it contains a crapton of C4]], courtesy of [[MagnificentBastard Smiling Jack]].]]

* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'', [[spoiler: the Sacred Stones turn out to just be rocks and have nothing to do with defeating the Demon King.]]

* The Ring of the Schwartz in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}''.
--> '''Yogurt:''' The ring is bupkis. I found it in a Crackerjack box. The Schwartz is in you Lonestar, it's in you.

* ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'' first plays with this trope and then subverts it in the last scene. [[spoiler:After performing the invocation ritual, Belloq opens the Ark and finds it to be just a box full of sand. Toht walks away laughing... and ''then'' God's fury comes out of it unleashed.]]