OK heres an idea for another list we can put up on the web site.

A list of all the locations MacGyver ever traveled to throughout the series.

Now I'm not sure that all the town names used where real.. but we can discuss that if we find any fake towns.

Once completed I might work on getting a world map with the locations on it.. but to start with we'll do it as a travel log and list the locations, dates, episodes etc.

ok so I'll start with he few I can recall right now.

Central Asia - Pilot - 29-Sept 85
Burma - Golden triangle - 6-Oct-85
Where did he steal the horse back from? Middle eastern country?
Budapest - Thief of Budapest - 13-Oct-85
Austria - Thief of Budapest

Hmm.. should we have the dates?

Hmm- sounds like a cool project. As for the dates of MacGyver's travels, I suppose we can assume that all his adventures are taking place in real time and so therefore if the date isn't specifically mentioned, we'll assume the date in the episode is the airdate of the original episode.
The dates might be a bit much- but if you want to be really complete, yeah- might as well throw them in.

Also, keep in mind that there are some travels that MacGyver (or someone else) mentions on the show that isn't necessarily shown. For example, we know that MacGyver has mentioned being in Afghanistan when his mother died (in "The Madonna"). I don't know if you want to try to figure out the math for all those kinds of mentions or not- but that would be something else to include too.

I don't think I'll worry about the external travel at the moment. Just focus on actual episode travel.

I'm thinking of the initial list being something like the timeline layout so the dates will fit nicely to that.

OK I've just done a quick mock up to give an idea of what it might look like. If any one has any ideas please let me know.

I think ultimately the best idea would be to have a world map with the locations marked with an information box appearing as you mouse over the locations.

But to start with we'll do a list for quick reference to make sure we have them all.

Don't forget to let me know if you have any suggestions on a better way to show the list.

Travel log

Nice idea. I like the mock up and the way it links to episode discussions but a map will look good when you have all the locations. There will be a lot of towns he visited in America so it may look a bit crowded there, unless they are all spread out. Then later on in the series was there not some fictional countries? Like black rhinos Kambezi that is meant to be in Africa. How do you put that on a map…unless its sort of covering the whole of Africa?

well we could mark somewhere approximate.. like Kenya and put a note about the fictional country or something.

hopefully theres not too many instances of that.

The only other made up one I can think of at the moment is the Kabulstan from Fountain of youth. I thought there was more but my brain refuses to work right now.

Southern France -- Toulon, right? -- The Odd Triple

Geneva, Switzerland -- Cease Fire

London, England and Britanny, France -- The Legend of the Holy Rose
(with a side trip into the English countryside -- I think it was supposed to be Kent or Sussex)

Oregon coast, US -- Log Jam (it looked as if it ought to be right around Astoria)

Cool Project!!!!

South America, the Gauntlet (don't remember the country, but I think its one of those fictional ones)

Virgin Islands, supposed to be like Monte Carlo in the Heist

Amazon Jungle, Trumbo's World.

San Pedro, California Nightmare

Bulgaria and Greece, Every Time She Smiles

Afghanistan, To Be a Man

India, Slow Death

North Africa, don't remember the country, The Escape

Russia, Prisoner of Conscience


These are all from Season 1, and something I have watched recently. I don't remember some of the cities, but I got most of the countries, I think. Except for the fictional ones anyway.

I think that about sums it up for the first season.

There's also Midway in Countdown. Been there didn't show it, I think. And that was on the cruise ship in the Pacific between West and East of the world.

I'll continue on from the second season and those not mentioned.

Chinatown in the Wish Child and Murderers' Sky.

There's the wildernis, don't remember the exact location in Final Approach.

Central America in Jack of Lies.

Southeast Asia, remember about leaving Thailand and I think a rally point in Bulgaria.

Mountains in Eagles, don't know where.

Albequerque in Three for the Road.

Cajun country Louisiana in Family Matter.

Russia, Siberia in Soft Touch.

The dangerous island of Pirates.

Another mountain area in Out in the Cold.

Latin America in Bushmasters.

Again somewhere in Spanish America in Friends, while coming home.

Czechoslovakia in For Love or Money.

Alaska in Ghost Ship and Gold Rush.

Zurich in GX-1 and East Germany.

Smiley, Arkansas in Jack in the Box.

The mountains in The Widowmaker also for Unfinished Business.

Don't know exactly where Western Tech is located. Was it in Minnesota?

Kill Zone's wildernis.

Minnesota in Thin Ice and Blood Brothers.

Don't know where they were going to in Mask of the Wolf but it was definitely Native Indian land driving all night.

Again the woods presumably somewhere in North America or near Minnesota to his old girlfriend.

Town of Betty Parker in Secret of Parker House.

Pennsylvania in The Outsiders.

Barraca in Central America: On a wing and a prayer.

The woods again in The Survivors.

Alberta, Canada in The Battle of Tommy Giordano.

More woods in The Invisible Killer.

The African Nation in Brainwashed. Don't know if there is any mention of an exact location.

Bangkok Thailand in Second Chance.

Chicago in Two Times Troubles.

Serenity, Montana. And isn't Montana also in Canada?

Peru in The Treasure of Manco.

Romania in Humanity.

East Berlin in The Wall.

Don't remember the exact areas in Bitter Harvest (Kasabian Town?) The Visitor, near the hot springs, or the Wasteland.

Taurus Mountains in Turkey.

More forrest in Faith Hope and Charity and Trail of Tears. Even though the court scene took place in the usual court house, Willis mentions something about going to Washington D.C. and MacGyver mentions something about sticking around and goes to investigate the case of the power plant. Never knew if this episode was home base game or not. It could be a forest in another state but it's not mentioned.

San Rochelle in Honest Abe.

Little Haïti is the place where MacGyver goes to live in The Hood and mentioned in The Walking Dead.

Camelot and Calledonia (aka Scotland) in Good Knight MacGyver.

Kabulstan and Ammukash in The Mountain of Youth.

Thera, Greece, Balkan Peninsula, London and back to Greece in Lost Treasure of Atlantis.

And London again in Trail to Doomsday.

"Little Haiti" is a nickname for a neighbourhood in LA. Like a lot of the locations, the specific place was either generic or somewhat fictionalised -- Mac visited a lot of unspecified ('undisclosed'?) countries in vague locations ("central Asia", "Central America", "Africa").

Final Approach is set in the mountains in California; it looked like the Sierra Nevadas. Eagles is probably also intended to be the Sierras.

Out in the Cold looked more like it was intended as the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

It was intended to be one of the offshore islands near LA, near Santa Catalina Island.

Spelled Albuquerque. The chase continued through rural New Mexico.

No, Montana is one of the United States.

Trail of Tears: the Native culture shown is Lakota, which should put the episode in the Great Plains area, probably North Dakota. The courthouse was in the same general area as the reservation land under dispute.

I'll have to watch Mask of the Wolf and see which Native artistic style was used. Regional styles tend to be very specific.

Did they specify an actual Caribbean island nation in Honest Abe, leave it generic, or make another one up?

I'll have to double-check to make sure, but from what I remember, I'm almost positive that the Caribbean island named in "Honest Abe" (as many times tends to be the case on TV shows) was totally made up.

Don’t think these should be on it -

He didn't travel there. He was flat out on a pavement somewhere in America at the time.
In the Pilot the Kiva institute was shown as being in Bannon, New Mexico. Don't know if Bannon is a real place though.

Bannon is not a real place. As best as I can tell (based on the background research I've been doing for Lothi on her Rainmakers fanfic), although the actual town does not exist, it's intended to be the desert area of southeastern New Mexico, not too far from Las Cruces.

Report on Mask of the Wolf: so-called "totem poles" are specific and unique to the Pacific Northwest Coast Native tribes; and the artistic style of the mask and other items was also specifically Pacific Northwest Coast. So this episode has to have been located in British Columbia -- it could have been Alaska, but that would have been too far for the stipulated driving time.

The mask looked Haida, the 'totem pole' looked Tlingit; but I'm sure an expert would shrug and say both were generic. The scene at the circle of totem poles was actually shot in Thunderbird Park at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, on Vancouver Island -- I was there about three years ago. It's an amazing collection. One of the poles is from a tribe with the jaw-breaking name of Kwakwaka'wakw.

There isn't an actual 'Wolf Tribe' -- that's invented -- but several of the different Pacific Northwest tribal nations, including the Tsimshian and the Nisga'a, have Wolf Clans.

So, along with all the episodes in which British Columbia stood in for other locations, this time around it played itself!

According to the all knowing Google earth and google search engine...

It's not a real place.

Eagles looked like part of it was filmed in the red rock canyon country of Southern Utah. One scene looks very much like Monument Valley.

It also shows snowbound mountains which would be higher elevations, more like the Rocky Mountains. You don't get that kind of snow in canyon country.

Ok I'll try to get what we have put together into the mock up over the next few days so we can see whats.. if anything we've left out.

That's why I thought the Sierra Nevada range was likely. Plenty of altitude there.

But missing the red rock country. The only place I know that is similar is in Colorado and southern Utah, but the Utah mountains are not as high.

this project got put on the back burners some what, but I was thinking about it today and I think this would work quite well as a Google map.. along the lines of the location maps I've done.

So it's still on my to Do list anyway.

OK I've put a few of the locations together in a map.

So take a look and let me know what you all think. I haven't decided if I want the heading of each location to be the name of the place (with the episode listed in the details) or the episode as the title and the place name in the details.

can anyone think of any other location's we've missed?

ok here a question.

Where do you think the episode Flames End takes place? Is West Port a real place?

The flashback seems to indicate that it's near where MacGyver went to university, which would be Western Tech, which leads to the next question....

Where was Western Tech? the name would suggest the west coast (California) maybe?

I've just rewatched the Friends episode and there was no mention of Mongolia in regard to the pilot opening gambit. SO where did the idea that it took place in Mongolia come from?

It could have originated in Mongolia Kiwi.

Blame the Mongolians!!!

"Little Haiti" is a nickname for a neighbourhood in LA. Like a lot of the locations, the specific place was either generic or somewhat fictionalised -- Mac visited a lot of unspecified ('undisclosed'?) countries in vague locations ("central Asia", "Central America", "Africa").

Final Approach is set in the mountains in California; it looked like the Sierra Nevadas. Eagles is probably also intended to be the Sierras.

Out in the Cold looked more like it was intended as the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

It was intended to be one of the offshore islands near LA, near Santa Catalina Island.

Spelled Albuquerque. The chase continued through rural New Mexico.

No, Montana is one of the United States.

Trail of Tears: the Native culture shown is Lakota, which should put the episode in the Great Plains area, probably North Dakota. The courthouse was in the same general area as the reservation land under dispute.

I'll have to watch Mask of the Wolf and see which Native artistic style was used. Regional styles tend to be very specific.

Did they specify an actual Caribbean island nation in Honest Abe, leave it generic, or make another one up?

"Eagles" is set in Monument Valley.

Wasn't aware that that was a thing. The subtitle just said "Central Asia," so I always assumed it was the USSR somewhere, one of the places that are now "former Soviet republics." (There's lots more interesting things for an American plane to be looking for there than there would be in Mongolia, I'd think).

Anyway. A few thoughts for some of the countries that are never named:

"The Escape" is in North Africa somewhere. It's a former French colony (the "gendarmerie" reference), so that eliminates Libya and Egypt, and Wikipedia informs me that Tunisia doesn't have a gendarmerie (it's called the National Guard instead), so that eliminates Tunisia. It's a socialist-aligned country (the AK-47s, the hostility to Westerners, the preening about "true democracy," plus the fact that a Soviet arms shipment was passing through there), so that eliminates Morocco. Leaving only Algeria.

"The Gauntlet." This one's a lot easier since it ends with them crossing the border into Mexico: the only two countries you can do that from (other than the U.S.A) are Guatemala and Belize. Belize is an English-speaking former British colony, and the country in that episode was pretty clearly Hispanic, leaving only Guatemala. Pretty well fits the portrayal too: it was getting somewhat better at the time but still fairly unstable and not hard to believe that a general like Vasquez might want a return to the old ways. (The recently deposed dictator, Efrain Rios Montt, was found guilty of genocide against the local Indian population, in case you're wondering why it reminded MacGyver of an American town with a lynching problem).

"Bushmaster." Almost certainly Nicaragua. It's a Central American country in which the authorities tend towards anti-Americanism. In an age when almost all the regimes in the region were right-wing, anticommunist, and U.S. affiliated, pretty much the only government that fits the bill is the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

With the other unnamed countries... it's hard to narrow it down to one country, too many possibilities. The opening gambit from "Thief of Budapest" is said to be in the Horn of Africa somewhere if I recall, which Wikipedia tells me means Somalia, Ethiopia, and Djibouti (Eritrea wasn't a country back then), but beyond that I don't know (racial profiling also tells me it could be quite wrong as most people in that area tend to be... darker; those guys look more Arab or Berber). The opening gambit from "The Gauntlet" is an Arab country with a desert where terrorist attacks are being plotted against the United States - that could be Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, South Yemen, and probably more. The opening gambit from "Target MacGyver" is a Middle Eastern country with a nuclear weapons reactor, which could be anyone - Iran and Iraq are the two obvious candidates, but not the only ones (Syria, Libya, Algeria...) And "The Road Not Taken" is somewhere that has a border with Thailand, so it could be Cambodia, Laos, or Burma, but no way to tell which - all three fit the pattern of "military regime that's not big on Westerners," but none of them were under a new regime at the time the episode aired, so who knows.