Secret Santicorn: Stealing the Sitch

I organized Purple OSR's Secret Santicorn this year, and kept myself in reserve for missed prompts.  Here's one for John Vakamos.  Happy Hanukwanzamas!
 
Prompt: Stealing situations from books, movies, and videogames for fun and profit.

Movie: Inception: Mindheists

The party has to get into someone’s mind and either remove, or harder still, implant a memory or idea there.  This will make them much easier to manipulate in the real world.

The characters have a limited macguffin to enter the mind of the target, and have to heist-like move through surrealistic situations, with a limited ability to impose their own visions, with the assistance of mundane “seed” objects that have a stronger persistence than the mindscape they are in.  These seed objects should provide a limited narrative control to the players, and for maximum effect should be things that they identify through research of the target, things that link to strong emotions and memories the target has associated with them.

Movie: Dark City: Memory Manipulation

    There is a device that lets its user extract memories as bodily fluids which they can then

inject into other people.  They can then use alchemy to mix and match collections of memories. 

    This device could be used by a cabal to try to manipulate some chosen one to their own

nefarious ends.  Identifying true believers and separating them from pawns subverted by the

cabal might be part of the campaign arc.
    The PCs might use it for similar nefarious purposes, or might instead use it to transfer

knowledge of spells, recover lost memories from squidzards, fey, or doppelgangers, or

possibly even to recover lost information from ghosts or undead. 

Movies: Star Wars: Pivotal Play

    There is an imminent threat that threatens the governance of the world(s), but there are

rumors of a vulnerability to a well-timed attack. The characters must make a desperate

play to expose that vulnerability to the focused might of the Resistance forces, or must

find information about that vulnerability, and get that information back to them. 
    In a fantastic setting, that might be something like setting the Dragon Repellent

device out of alignment, allowing the dragons to attack, to finding the vulnerability

of mecha-tarasque, and couriering it to the defenders of the realm. The goal of this

kind of mission is not for the party to singlehandedly defeat the threat, but to play a

pivotal role in making that defeat possible. 

Movie: True Grit: Avenge the Child

    The party is hired by a child to avenge her on the killers of her parents. 
    This can be played straight, with stone rigging at heart strings,  or with possible

future utility, if the family has some sort of power the daughter still controls, or it

can have twists, if the killers were avenging deaths the parents caused

Book: The Peripheral: Another World

    The characters are pulled into another world to perform a service ("I cast

Summon Monster VI").  They see something nobody else does, and are repeatedly

summoned to get information and help someone in that other world.  Then the

opposition of that world starts sending attackers at them in their own world. 

    This other world might be a fae or genie society, svart elves, or a society

from the not too near future.

Children's Book: There's a Monster at the End of This Book: Autofulfilling Propphecy

The characters, or one of them, has a prophecy that they will find a monster at the

end of a dungeon. When they get to the end, they find out the monster is them. This

could be played lightly if the character(s) are considered monstrous by society at large,

or could be played very darkly if the character(s) are “normal humans” who do dark

things to stop the monster from getting them before realizing they are the dark thing. 

Book: The Three Musketeers: Swashbuckling Hijinx

The characters are sworn to the Crown, and find nefarious plots by a significant ally

of the Crown who is secretly trying to set up a coup, and always manages to either look

like a defender of the Crown or to make the characters own motivations look questionable. 
    To stay true to the source, this situation should have plenty of melodrama, including

mistaken Identity galore,  conveniently overheard discussions or monologues, and

significant bonuses for attempting swashbuckling or derring-do, which should fail

forward even as there is a cost for that failure. 

    This last one is more of a device than a situation, but….

Show: Letterkenny/Books: The Deathgate Cycle: Fanservice

  Certain characters repeatedly appear, at least to the view/reader in a certain way to

trigger a certain response.  In The Deathgate Cycle, it’s Zifnab, or, err, Nabfiz, or, err,

whatever his name the wizard, forgetting just about everything but somehow

accomplishing his end goal, providing near-omnipotence and humor in one tidy package.
In Letterkenny, the character is very different, in the form of Bonnie McMurray, a

character whom the all of the Hicks except Wayne are attracted to, but who is only

attracted to Wayne, and dresses provocatively to try to gain his interest.  This is a much

more conventional form of fan service (at least by anime standards), but has a similar

effect as an inside joke.