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Mac
- Anytime Mac's in a troublesome spot, he can whip up a solution based on what he can see in his immediate surroundings.
Season 1
- "The Rising": He deflects several bullets using a silver platter.
- "Awl": He builds gas masks out of garbage for him and Jack. He then releases gas from a refrigerator, weakening the thugs in the room. He and Jack then take out all of them.
- "Toothpick": While having a fight on a speeding train, his opponent points a gun at him. Thinking fast, he sticks a pin into the the gun preventing it from firing. He then kicks his opponent out the window of the train, killing him.
- "Can Opener": Breaks out of a maximum security prison using only stolen batteries, prison food, toilet water, newspaper, a decoy Bedsheet Ladder, and a makeshift ladder.
- "Chisel":
- In order to defend an embassy from terrorists, he builds several weapons, including a bazooka, out of cleaning supplies, piping, and a statue.
- His original goal was to buy time for reinforcements to defend the embassy, but he ends up trapping the terrorists inside of it while everyone escapes.
- "Large Blade": Literally catches lightning in a bottle in order to power a phone to call for help.
- "Cigar Cutter": When the Organization attempts to steal the virus from the first episode, Mac threatens to blow up the room they're in to stop them. One of the members accuses him of bluffing. He wasn't.
Season 2
- "Roulette Wheel + Wire": Contains a nuclear explosion using an underground safe. Moreover, the safe was thought impossible to crack in the little time they had, but he manages to do it by shrinking the metal lock.
- "X-Ray + Penny": Murdoc kidnaps and drugs him, but he manages to escape by himself. Less awesome when it turns out this is exactly what Murdoc wanted.
- "Jet Engine + Pickup Truck": The title says it all. Mac builds a jet enhanced pickup truck, and later uses it to extinguish a burning oil well.
- "Bullet + Pen": A drug lord infiltrates the police station where Mac is being held after being framed for murder. The drug lord shoots three FBI agents, and Mac hides with an FBI agent and cop, neither of which have their guns. Using just a bullet, pen, and piece of paper, Mac builds an exploding dart. The drug lord shoots at Mac, but he dodges all the shots and throws the dart at him. The explosion stuns him and the FBI agent grabs his gun and arrests him.
- "Skyscraper - Power": Electrocutes an entire team of armed kidnappers.
- "UFO + Area 51": The UFO turns out to be a missile coated in a gallium shell, allowing it to change shape. As the soldiers trying to retrieve it enter the morgue in Area 51, they see it in the back room and go to get it. Mac then traps them in the room, which is bullet proof. The leader of soldiers declares that they're going to kill Mac and walk away with the device. Mac then connects a circuit, which liquefies the gallium and reveals that he replaced the device with a improvised stun grenade, which takes out all the soldiers.
Season 3
- "Father + Bride + Betrayal": We get an insight to how his mind works. He looks around a room labeling the items, then narrows it down to what he needs to escape.
Season 4
- "Loyalty + Family + Rogue + Hellfire": after being benched as Russ thinks he's compromised, Mac lives up to his name, throws some stuff together apparently overnight for a Fake Defector ploy. Then he just goes and gets Scarlett out of custody, but is stopped by Russ and Desi... who he takes out simply by slipping homemade gas masks on him and Scarlett and holding a lit flare to the fire detector, which sucks all the oxygen out of the corridor and makes them pass out. He and Scarlett just walk past.
Season 5
- "Quarantine + N95 + Landline + Telescope + Social Distance": Mac creating stealth camo with a HD video camera and an iris diaphragm.
Jack
Season 1
- "Flashlight": When the thieves fire a laser guided smart-bullet at Mac, Jack uses a more powerful laser to redirect the bullet away from Mac, and at the engine of the thieves' boat. His speed and accuracy had to be insane to pull that off.
- "Cigar Cutter": Successfully MacGyvers a bomb, simply by watching Mac building bombs so many times.
- "Scavengers + Hard Drive + Dragonfly": Ambushes and takes out about half a dozen henchmen by himself.
- "Specimen 234 + PAPR + Outbreak": In order to create a distraction for Mac, he starts a fight with about a dozen bodyguards, and wins.
- "Father + Bride + Betrayal": Jack comes up with the idea of using golf clubs to take out a couple of armed terrorists.
Murdoc
Season 1
- "Cigar Cutter": Escapes from a supermax prison in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome.
Season 2
- "X-Ray + Penny": The team arrests Henry, the hitman that Murdoc lead them to, and drive away with him in an armored vehicle. Murdoc then fires an RPG at it, causing the vehicle to flip over. With the entire team incapacitated, Murdoc saves Henry and tells him that he's starting a collective of professional killers.
- Even more so when you realise the whole episode, including Mac escaping, was All According to Plan (or at least a Xanatos Gambit). He really just played the team like fiddles. I'd go so far as to call this a Villain Protagonist episode.
- "Murdoc + Handcuffs":
- After his collective turns on him, Murdoc is handed over to Mac and Jack. All three of them end up running away from Nicholas Helman, Murdoc's mentor. However, Murdoc ends up "killing" Helman and saving Mac in the process.
- As a reward, Murdoc is allowed to see his son while in custody. In another Offscreen Moment of Awesome, Murdoc escapes with his son using only the blade from a pencil sharpener. He then prepares to kill Henry with a knife, and says that he came for him first. It's later mentioned that he killed all the members of his failed collective.
Season 3
- "Murdoc + MacGyver + Murdoc
- He forces Mac to help him rescues his son by kidnapping Mac's girlfriend. She lives in Africa, so Murdoc had to trick her into coming to LA by posing as Mac. Even the team is impressed by how quickly and effectively he set it up.
- It's revealed that his wife, Amber, has been working with the kidnappers and it was all a setup so he would steal $30 million as a ransom. Amber and the kidnappers drive off with the money. Absolutely infuriated, Murdoc steals a pickup truck and rams the kidnapper's car head on. Despite receiving serious injures, he get out of the truck and shoots the three kidnappers. He spares Amber only out of consideration for their son.
Bozer
Season 1
- "Cigar Cutter": Bozer is stabbed early on by the assassin sent to infiltrate the Phoenix. While lying in an office chair Bozer notices from a video feed to his lab that the assassin stole the extremely lifelike, but not water soluble, mask he had shown him before he revealed his true colors. Spotting the assassin making his way through the Phoenix personnel undetected Bozer, fighting through considerable pain, got up to trigger the sprinklers, the sole reason the assassin doesn't escape.
- "DIY or Die": Bozer is the one who takes down the episode's Big Bad by knocking him out with a candlestick moments before he shoots Jack.
- "Packing Peanuts + Fire": After Matty sends him to spy school for new recruit training, he discovers and dismantles a spy ring that had been gathering intel on every agent at the facility. Matty even says that this was more impressive than what the rest of the team accomplished in the episode (stopping an art trafficker who was funding terrorism).
- His whole spy school arc. He goes from a Non-Action Guy to a competent agent on the same level as the rest of the cast.
- "Scavengers + Hard Drive + Dragonfly": When confronted by a guard about twice his size, Bozer punches him right in the face, which only amuses him. But Bozer, now knowing how to fight, goes for the guard's leg and knocks him down. Despite the size difference, Bozer holds his own until Mac knocks the guard out with a vase.
- During the 18 month Time Skip, the other members of the team got mundane jobs, but Bozer fulfilled his lifelong dream and made a movie, which from the looks of it was loved by pretty much everyone.Reporter: How does it feel to follow your dreams and stick the landing?Bozer: Well, Mandy I have to say there are worse things.
- "Kid + Plane + Cable + Truck": Fearing that the Villain of the Week, a hitman, might escape, Bozer defies orders and goes after him without backup. He then proceeds to kick his ass. He gets poisoned for troubles, and the hitman would still have gotten caught if Bozer did wait for backup, but it's still an awesome takedown.
The Merchant
- The Merchant certainly earns one for seeing through Russ' psy-ops gambit. For context, Phoenix have captured The Merchant and put him in a set made to look like a Chinese secret prison, with Mac as a "cellmate" to bond with him and extract information. While at first it seems to be working, The Merchant soon realises he's being set up by listening to the bird noises from "outside" and noticing they're on a loop. Even more impressive as it's clear that he's Codex's finance guy; he's not a soldier or anyone who'd expect or be trained to deal with capture or interrogation. He's plainly terrified out of his mind and off his anxiety meds to boot, but still manages to see through the illusion and almost Out Gambit the team by giving them misinformation designed to get him rescued.Merchant: One... two... three... parrotbill. [Bird chirps] Four... five... bunting. [Other bird sings]
- Another villainous example for Codex for being Crazy-Prepared; in the event of capture, their operatives are given certain phrases to use, "bunker" and "Zanzibar." When these phrases are searched for in tandem, Codex traces the address so they can stage a rescue.
