Shameless Movie Scene Rip-Offs You Got Away With

[Bucaramanga]

I think every DM, experienced or not, has gone through this situation.

You really like a certain awesome fight or chase scene from a certain impossibly cool movie and want to re-create it in your game. Or you just don't have enough time to prepare and decide to just throw in into your game. So you roll up leper ninjas called Immortals, add a sarlacc pit and a several traps where only the penitent man shall pass to your Ominous Castle of Doom and prepare for name-calling, plagiarism accusations and possible lawsuits.

But no. Nothing like this happens. No one of your players gets that THIS! IS! GREYHAWK! reference. Nobody comments on the fact that the Evil Overlord's troops include ginormous elephants called mumakil and sapient armored polar bears. Maybe your players've been living under a rock for several years. Or they were so engrossed by the action that they failed to notice that they've seen it somewhere before. Or they were too busy discussing their new iPhone that they didn't pay attention to the game.

Anyhow, you smuggled a reference, or even a rip-off, to a movie that your players are likely to have seen and got away with it. So, did you have any experiences like that?

Personally, I've had at least two. One of them involved a re-enaction of the bishop ambush scene from the 2004 King Arthur movie (rather rubbish overall, but the scene is awesome). The PCs attacked a carriage carrying a corrupt bishop who was the Big Bad of the campaign, slaughtered the guards, and killed the guy... or, as it turned out, a look-alike who'd been used to distract them from the "real" villain. It was a complete rip-off, but no one recognized it until I told them.

The same campaign featured speaking to the ghosts of the heroes of yore via some magical prism-shaped crystals that had to be inserted into a strange crystal machine. A big hello from the 1978 Superman movie that went completely unnoticed.

 

[Crothian]

The group is traveling through a large grass lands with grass almost as high as they are. About 100 or so feat ahead they notice the head of a large lizard just standing there. They discuss what they should do and wonder what the creature is doing just standing there. About that time is when the other Velociraptor ambush them from the side. I've run this scene at least three different times and it always works. Only once was it recognized as the classic scene from Jurassic Park and I had a player say "Clever Girl" just like in the movie.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

The current PBEM game that I'm in was directly inspired from the Rembaldi storyline in Alias. But since the campaign name is "Rembaldi", I don't think he's getting away with anything.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I have had the players run the Pulp Fiction interrogation scene "They speak English in what?!?" with the roles of Travolta and Jackson.

I've also run, more or less, the entire movie of the first Die Hard with a building of nobles as hostages. (Players, as a group, were Bruce Willis...because no one player is John McClane awesome). It wasn't until half way through the adventure that everything clicked (when one of the bad guys was throwing a fit because his brother was dead...and then they realized why the building was called Nakatomi Plaza).

 

[jonesy]

I used Jack Nicholsons character from The Passenger as a BBEG. If you're not familiar with it, it's a movie where a man finds a dead person and decides to swap identities with him, before realizing that it was a pretty shady character. So my BBEG was an innocent man in way over his head in crime.

Outside of movies, I've borrowed from Othello, King Lear, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

I also stole the plot of The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett for a sideplot in a Top Secret game.

 

[darjr]

TMNT and other strangeness. I ran a con game that was, at least in setup, a rip off of 'The Warriors'. I did manage to get in the line 'Warriors, come out and playeay!'

 

[D'karr]

Oh, to count the ways, I might actually run out of space here:

Final battle between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader (Episode 4)
Bridge Scene - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Rail Cart Scene - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Bridge at Khazad-Dum - Fellowship of the Ring
Boat Chase Scene - Spyhunter Video Game
Train Fight Scene - Mission Impossible
Plummeting to Earth Scene - Moonraker
Infiltrate the Stronghold Scene - The Dirty Dozen
Flying Monkeys are here to kill you - Wizard of Oz

Honestly I steal profusely from almost every medium. A lot of times they are completely unaware of the similarity until much later. Sometimes they catch on early. It is awesome to hear the players say with total glee and excitement, "Oh man, this is just like that X from Y." I smile and say with mock anger, "It is absolutely nothing like that."

 

[jasper]

the town destruction scene from Paint your wagon
murder in a haunted house / teen prom slasher flick/
are the only two that stand the test of time.

 

[Rugsrat]

I think my biggest theft... er... homage was when I lifted a few ideas from the Sword of Truth series:

1. The Grace
2. Darken Rahl (by name)
3. The People's Palace of D'Hara
4. The Devotion.

Of course, I re-flavored some of that. There was no Westland or Midlands, instead D'Hara was on an island that was incredibly hard to get off of, and they were all incredibly fanatic sun-worshipers. They brainwashed their own population into almost complete pacifism, and also brainwashed one of my major party members into Sun Worship as well.

Of course, I'm the only one in the group that has read the Sword of Truth Series, so I was able to pull all of that off pretty easily.

Of course, I did also have a palace that was carved from a mountain. Only about 2 people gave me a quirked eyebrow and mentioned Minas Tirith, to which I could only shrug.

 

[Stumblewyk]

I adapted The Tragedy of Macbeth wholesale into an adventure back in 2e. I had just read the play for my AP English course, and knew my friends had never read it or seen it performed.

So, I created a super high level bard name William who trapped the PCs in an elaborate illusion, allowing them to play a role in his most recently crafted work. The PCs took on the roles of guardsmen in Macbeth's service and got to bear witness to many of the events of the play while having the opportunity to influence and affect many others.

That is the one bit of D&D stuff I wish I had retained in my game notes from high school. I honestly think it was a really good adventure, and I'd love to run it again some day. Guess I should just suck it up, reread "the Scottish Play" and get cracking on a rewrite. =/