MacGruber
MacGruber was a recurring sketch on the NBC television series Saturday Night Live, first appearing on the show in January 2007. The sketch is a parody of the 1985–1992 adventure series MacGyver. The sketch stars Will Forte as special operations agent MacGruber, who is tasked in each episode with deactivating a ticking bomb but becomes distracted by personal issues, resulting in the bomb's detonation and (presumably) the deaths of his companions and himself.
This article is about a Saturday Night Live sketch. For the film, see MacGruber (film). For the television series, see MacGruber (TV series).MacGruber
Will Forte
John Solomon
Jorma Taccone
Jorma Taccone
John Solomon
Will Forte
Maya Rudolph (2007)
Kristen Wiig (2008–2010, 2022)
United States
5
30
Studio 8H,
GE Building,
Rockefeller Center
New York City, New York
Approx. 1 Minute
Saturday Night Live (2006–2010)
Super Bowl XLIII (2009)
January 20, 2007 –
May 8, 2010; January 22, 2022
MacGruber's popularity has led to a film based on the character, which was released on May 21, 2010. A television series for the streaming service Peacock premiered on December 16, 2021.
Creation[edit]
The character of MacGruber was created by SNL writer Jorma Taccone. The sketches are written by Forte, Taccone and John Solomon and directed by Taccone, except for the March 2008 and May 2008 installments, which were directed by Solomon.
MacGyver/Pepsi cross-over[edit]
During the January 31, 2009, episode of SNL, MacGyver star Richard Dean Anderson appeared with Forte in three Pepsi commercials designed to resemble MacGruber sketches.[1] In the commercials, MacGyver complains about the poor job MacGruber is doing and accuses him of being a sellout. The commercials were later included as part of the SNL episode on Hulu.
In the second commercial, later re-aired during Super Bowl XLIII, MacGruber and MacGyver are locked in the control room of an "illegal supply ship", where MacGruber becomes distracted by the temptation of Pepsi and announces he has changed his name to "Pepsuber." In the third commercial, the MacGruber theme song lyrics and MacGruber's dialogue have been replaced by the single word "Pepsi" repeated over and over and over. When his companions finally get fed up with this and ask if he can say anything but Pepsi, MacGruber holds up a Diet Pepsi, but is only able to say "Diet Pep-" before the control room explodes, and the commercial ends.
Anderson returned to SNL on the March 7, 2009, episode, in which it was revealed that MacGyver is actually MacGruber's long-lost father (making the latter's full name "MacGruber MacGyver"), who left his mother (Abby Elliott) for a stripper named Lacey when MacGruber was a baby.