He has over-the-top disguises and weapons complemented by a maniacal-smile persona that offer a touch of comic relief to the series.

He gets childlike joy from taunting his victims before he kills them using elaborate traps (which MacGyver can just manage to escape).

Exhausted from work, MacGyver falls asleep and dreams that he is in the Old West aiming to retire with a claim to a Montana ranch home, although trouble soon starts with neighboring landowner Pete Thornton and his hired mercenary, Murdoc.

When Murdoc was in his early 20s he failed the psychiatric tests when attempting to enlist in the Army, and started working within foreign militaries in order to fulfill his desire to shoot and kill people.

Eventually he was mentored by an assassin named Nicolas Helman, who Murdoc tells MacGyver and Jack Dalton he considers an even deadlier individual than himself.

After becoming an assassin, but over a decade before his first encounter with MacGyver, Murdoc met a woman named Nadia who became pregnant with his child and fell in love with him while he only felt she was "less repulsive than most humans".

Murdoc is able to deceive Bozer long enough to enter MacGyver's home by pretending to be a "friend from work" there to see him.

Murdoc's next appearance is later that year; Riley Davis and Bozer visit him in prison to determine the identity of the mole within the Phoenix Foundation.

Murdoc later helps MacGyver to impersonate him in order to find an individual being targeted and the person requesting the assassination.

During the course of this event it is revealed that the leader of Phoenix, Matilda Webber, had found out about his now teenage son, Cassian, who attends an exclusive private school in Switzerland.

At the end of the first season it is discovered that Murdoc was able to secretly hire an assassin to enter the Phoenix Foundation headquarters in disguise to get revenge on MacGyver and team.

During their next encounter Murdoc drugs and kidnaps MacGyver, holding him in an abandoned warehouse basement and demanding to know Cassian's location.

When the Phoenix Foundation agents arrive they find a picture of a man named Henry Fletcher and assume he is a new target.

After trading, Helman shows back up seeking revenge for killing his wife and reveals that Murdoc's real first name is Dennis.

When he sees Cassian he asks him to put on an earlier present he sent him, headphones, and turn up his favorite song as loud as he wants.