- Awesome Music: The main theme not only sounds, well, awesome, but it also sums the show up about as perfectly as any lyricless tune possibly could. The subdued electronic intro is accompanied by scenes of someone fiddling with gizmos and sciency stuff, segueing in to a shot of a bomb timer counting down as the volume rises, before the show title literally explodes on to the screen and the main theme begins to accompany a montage of thrilling action shots. Wow!
- Common Knowledge: "Each episode has a Batman Cold Open, in which MacGyver does something cool before the credits even roll". Except there is less than a dozen of those, all in the first season, in a series that runs for 94 episodes in total. As cool as the opening gambits were, they were introduced solely to further familiarise the audience with this new series and its premise and thus weren't needed anymore after just a couple of episodes.
- Dry Docking: Nikki Carpenter was introduced as a possible love interest for Mac. However, the producers soon discovered that female fans did not want Mac to be permanently attached and Nikki was quietly Put on a Bus.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Murdoc. No one ever wanted him to actually defeat MacGyver, but fans loved to see MacGyver's Indy Ploys go up against Murdoc's Crazy-Prepared schemes.
- The Coltons, a family of bounty hunters, brothers Frank, Billy, and Jesse (and a pug who takes a liking to one of them and he names Frog) who periodically show up in the series to assist MacGyver, and are later revealed to have a formidable mother who got them into the business in the first place.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Immense hit in Poland since its first airing in the early 90s and has a memetic status ever since, with countless reruns over the decades. A slang term for Swiss army knife to this day is "makgajwer". The whole concept of MacGyvering hit right home with Polish own "kombinować
", along with the endearing Do It Yourself TV series that run for decades in Polish national TV. - Harsher in Hindsight:
- The episode "Black Rhino" had a clear message about poaching and even ended with a PSA read by Richard Dean Anderson about the topic. Since the episode, the Western Black Rhino sub-species went extinct in 2011. On a brighter note, the Black Rhino have made a recovery thanks to persistent conservation efforts, but are still critically endangered.
- In "Gold Rush", the Colonel mentions (falsely) that, if he had things his way, he'd give the gold to the "Afghan freedom fighters". MacGyver was filmed during the Cold War. Osama bin Laden led some of those "Afghan Freedom Fighters". Now look at Afghanistan and the world in general as it is today.
- "The Ten Percent Solution" deals with Nazis in influential positions throughout America. Come 2017 and the Charlottesville riots, and the rise of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism throughout America in general, it's hard not to see the episode as being grimly prophetic.
- The episode "Black Rhino" had a clear message about poaching and even ended with a PSA read by Richard Dean Anderson about the topic. Since the episode, the Western Black Rhino sub-species went extinct in 2011. On a brighter note, the Black Rhino have made a recovery
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Any scene containing Richard Dean Anderson's future Stargate SG-1 co-stars, especially the one where he throws Christopher Judge on the ground. Doubly funny when his character guesses a gadget is a "Martian toothbrush."
- Don S. Davis was also Dana Elcar's stunt double in the series, meaning the technically has played Anderson's boss in both series.
- Dr. Zito (W. Morgan Sheppard) helping someone set up a mock Viking funeral.
- As seen in the page quote, the first MacGyver joke is actually in the show's own first episode.
- MacGyver is all about fixing things, no matter what. His actor, Richard Dean Anderson wasn't as lucky when he tried to fix a cap.
Richard: "MacGyver my ass." - Any scene containing Richard Dean Anderson's future Stargate SG-1 co-stars, especially the one where he throws Christopher Judge on the ground. Doubly funny when his character guesses a gadget is a "Martian toothbrush."
- Memetic Loser: Jack Dalton in the series is a happy-go-lucky Ace Pilot that is always eager to participate in some Get-Rich-Quick Scheme or a more elaborate con. Jack in the fandom's perception is a down-on-his-luck loser that never manages to pull any of his cons, simply because some of his ploys failed.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Murdoc's yell of "MACGYVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" whenever he is defeated.
- MacGyver was a popular subject of parody on YTMND, blowing his contraptions to ridiculous proportions.
- The concept of MacGyvering, meaning to fix or build something using improvised materials and tools.
- Moment of Awesome: The entire opening gambit of "The Gauntlet."
- Parody Displacement: There's a pretty good chance one might be more familiar with countless parodies of it, most prominently the Saturday Night Live MacGruber, rather than MacGyver himself. note
- Retroactive Recognition: Mayim Bialik in her child actor phase played the reoccurring role of Lisa Woodman.
