Fact: MACGYVER is awesome

A month or so ago, Nathan made me aware of the Chuck Norris fact phenomenon, and its various offshoots (like Mr. T or Vin Diesel). Essentially, you just pick some guy with cult action hero status, and then concoct greatly exaggerated tales of his exploits, and present them as facts. These "facts" are submitted by any visitor to the site who is inclined, and, having no real filtering process, vary widely in quality. However, when Nathan first introduced Aiden and myself to the top 30 Chuck Norris facts, we couldn't stop laughing. I'll grant that they may not be to everyone's taste, but if you've got the proper appreciation for them, they're comic gold.

So, Chuck Norris is cool and all, but a recent link to an amateurish Portuguese graphic adventure (which was awesome), courtesy of Travis, reminded me that there is another action hero who is far cooler: MACGYVER. The man's a patriotic, super-intelligent, globe-trotting, ass-kicking special agent who refuses to carry a gun, but can kill you a dozen different ways using only a magnifying glass and a toothpick. Clearly, MACGYVER is king bad-ass. So where's his facts page? Right here. :-)

I wrote most of these up a couple of weeks ago, whenever inspiration struck me (I've been saving the post for whenever I couldn't think of anything else to write about). I got out of bed a couple of times in the middle of the night to get some of these gems written down before I forgot them. I'd been hoping to add more since, and was even entertaining the idea of starting a page, but I guess the spark left me at some point. True to the spirit of the other fact collections, but without the justification, these vary wildly in quality. I just wrote down anything that had the right feel, regardless of how great or mediocre it was. Hopefully they're all original-- my memory's poor, so I'm worried I may have stolen one or two of the Chuck Norris facts. In any case, without further ado, and in the order that I came up with them, I give you MACGYVER facts:


Fact: MACGYVER's first name is "Angus". Anyone who dares to call him Angus is found days later with no sign of a murder weapon other than a elastic band and a paperclip found nearby. MACGYVER is "MACGYVER".

Fact: The only thing that MACGYVER cannot produce with a soda can and an extension cord... is mercy.

Fact: Legends state that MACGYVER can do anything with a jack-knife. These legends are false. Jack was simply the name of the first man MACGYVER killed using the toothpick and spork found on his custom-made knife. MACGYVER can do anything with a MACGYVER-knife.

Fact: MACGYVER staged the moon landing using a camera and some string so that noone would come near his Lunar Command Post.

Fact: Some crazy people claim that MACGYVER was just a TV character, played by Richard Dean Anderson. In actuality, Richard Dean Anderson was played by MACGYVER, and the show was a documentary, the events of which REALLY HAPPENED.

Fact: MACGYVER invented genocide using only blankets and smallpox.

Fact: It is a commonly-held misconception that Einstein's formula E = Mc^2 describes his special theory of relativity. In fact, an "a" has been lost over the years, and Einstein was simply trying to describe the massive amounts of energy produced when MACGYVER squares off with Murdock. However, he failed miserably, because MACGYVER is a constant. His second and lesser-known formula states that lim(innovation) as intelligence -> infinity = MACGYVER.

Fact: The United States of MACGYVER was renamed in 1979 in an effort to mislead the KGB.

Fact: MACGYVER-ologists theorize that MACGYVER invented the gun in an attempt to give the rest of humanity a chance to best him in a confrontation. This clearly is not the case, because the gun failed to do that, and MACGYVER never fails.

Fact: MACGYVER can invent 1000 different things using a ball of yarn and a pair of sunglasses. 999 of these things can kill a man. The remaining thing can kill a planet.

Fact: James Bond once attacked MACGYVER in a restaurant. Bond was bristling with Q's deadly gadgets, while MACGYVER was calmly eating dinner. It was the first time that they had ever met face to face, and the last, since they then met face to knee, face to floor, and finally, face to improvised cutlery cannon.

Fact: One time, MACGYVER built a time machine out of an old refrigerator and a pocketwatch, and used it to travel to the ancient paradise of Atlantis. However, while there, he went on a drunken bender with with a magnifying glass and a book of matches. This area is now known as the Sahara.

Fact: Necessity is the mother of invention. MACGYVER is the father.

Fact: Rome wasn't built in a day, because MACGYVER spent the entirety of the first day making love to every woman in sight. Rome was built in exactly 25 hours, and soon became a mighty empire thanks to a legion of fearless mullet-headed warriors armed with knives and string.

Fact: MACGYVER has one weakness-- he cannot hurt a woman. Fortunately, it is equally impossible for a woman to hate MACGYVER.

Fact: Chuck Norris is an android built by MACGYVER in an attempt to find a worthy opponent. However, MACGYVER designed him to be so intelligent that he refuses to attack MACGYVER, because HE KNOWS HE WILL LOSE.

Fact: The Trojan horse actually failed miserably. But while the soldiers were busy slaying the trapped troops, MACGYVER snuck inside and laid waste to the city using a wooden plank and a deck of playing cards.

Fact: MACGYVER's mullet is coated with a space-age polymer he designed using eyeliner and glue. Some believe that this makes him irresitible to women, but this is untrue. MACGYVER is innately irrestible to women-- the polymer repels them, in an effort to perpetuate the human race by having them mate with men other than MACGYVER.

Fact: MACGYVER never kills. He has a robot army made of toothpicks and glue to do that for him.

Fact: President Kennedy once offered to make MACGYVER's houseboat a sovereign nation with its own laws. He was killed days later by a magic bullet MACGYVER designed using a toy plane and chewing gum. MACGYVER IS the law.

Fact: On the 1st day, God created MACGYVER. On the 2nd day, God created knives and paperclips. On the 3rd day, MACGYVER created everything else.

Fact: Once, while vacationing in the Ukraine, MACGYVER was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. He woke up in a jail cell, but the jailers made the mistake of leaving him access to a radio and a toilet. The city of Chernobyl was never quite the same.

Fact: MACGYVER doesn't use guns, because he can kill a man 100 different ways with some salt packets and a disposable razor, but only one way with a gun. Besides, he could use those packets and the razor to make a gun if he wanted to anyway.

Fact: There, is, believe it or not, one thing that MACGYVER cannot invent-- a way to kill MACGYVER.

Fact: Due to the length of time it has spent in proximity to MACGYVER's brain, MACGYVER's mullet has its own graduate degree from MIT, the MACGYVER Institute of Technology. MACGYVER's knife, being much further from his brain, is enrolled in the Yale school of Drama. MACGYVER prefers not to talk about it.

Fact: MACGYVER disproves Newton's 3rd law by his very existence, since no force exists that can oppose MACGYVER.

Fact: The only thing that can kill MACGYVER is a silver bullet... fired from a railgun orbiting Saturn. And even then, you'd better pray to god that he's not holding a newspaper.


So, there they are. Hopefully at least one of them made you laugh. My favorite is the third one, personally. I apologize for all of the bold text, but I wanted something to set my facts apart from all the other sets, and there's just something about his name that demands that it be spoken with great gravity. Personally, whenever I read it, it resonates in my head in the same way that it's said during the episode of the Simpsons where Bob tries to kill Selma Patty Selma Marge's sister. You know: "Tonight on MACGYVER... MACGYVER... MACGYVER..." Classic. :-)