Stranger Things has come to its epic conclusion (planned follow-up shows aside), and it has absolutely made an impact on pop culture.
Part of the show’s lasting legacy is introducing people to roleplaying games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons. Yes, shows like Freaks and Geeks and Community got there first, not to mention the sitcom juggernaut The Big Bang Theory, but I don’t know that any of them made the experience as accessible to new viewers as Stranger Things did.
Heck, there’s been two different Stranger Things/D&D starter packs to bring those new players into the fold!
And it got me thinking about D&D moments in movies and television shows.
Not moments that mention D&D or its lore or show gameplay or anything like that. I mean moments that FEEL like someone playing D&D.
There are certain moments in pop culture that feel like a D&D solution to a problem, as if this exact scenario appeared in a D&D game and this was the solution devised by the players.
It’s hard to define exactly what makes a scene in TV or cinema FEEL like a D&D moment. Sure, you can pick any buckwild action movie like Crank or Shoot ‘Em Up or Hardcore Henry or Mad Max: Fury Road, but for all the big setpieces and chaotic energy in those films, they don’t necessarily FEEL like a D&D game.
But these scenes definitely do.
It’s only natural to start with a scene from Stranger Things. In season 4, the heroes infiltrate the Upside Down to stop Vecna and try to rescue Max, but they need a distraction.
So, naturally, Eddie performs a wicked guitar solo and blasts metal music to distract the bat creatures and help Steve, Robin, and Nancy get closer.
This feels like such a D&D move for a bard to do, performing a badass yet ridiculously out-of-place musical number in order to help the party.
In the dead zone between the films Pitch Black and 2013’s Riddick, there was the film Chronicles of Riddick, detailing Vin Diesel’s antihero adventures after the events of Pitch Black.
In the film, we’re told this prison planet is so scorchingly hot that it’s uninhabitable, and you’re surely die within moments.
So naturally Vin Diesel’s character dumps a bottle of water over his back and swings into a canyon through the direct sunlight, and the water saves him. It feels like such a D&D player solution to the problem.
A ridiculous big-swing attack is also a D&D hallmark, so there’s a scene from The Boondock Saints that comes to mind.
In this film, two brothers become vigilantes and begin hunting down criminals. When several mobsters show up after the brothers got the better of them in a bar fight, Connor is handcuffed to a toilet while the thugs drag off Murphy.
So, as you might expect, Connor rips the toilet out of the floor, then carries it to the rooftop, dropping the toilet and then leaping, still handcuffed, onto the thugs, saving his brother.
There has never ever been a game of D&D without at least one player throwing themselves off a high thing and leaping onto the bad guys, gravity be damned. It’s a classic trope.
I reached out to several of my fellow roleplayers for suggestions of other scenes that feel like D&D, and they had two excellent recommendations.
The first is this hilarious sequence from Three Amigos!, where our heroes (?) meet the Singing Bush and encounter the Invisible Swordsman.
It goes so perfectly wrong, and every player has seen a quest go pear-shaped in similar fashion.
There are a lot of scenes from Galaxy Quest that could fit the bill, given that you have a bunch of actors pretending they’re characters from a Star Trek-like sci-fi show.
My friend Troy recommended the scene where Commander Taggart and Dr. Lazarus pretend they’re fighting (like their characters did in an episode) in order to distract the guards and ambush them. They do an awful job, but the ruse still succeeds.
But I think my favorite is the rock monster scene shown above. The panic, the fumbling around for a solution… it’s all so D&D.
So, fellow players, do you have any favorite scenes from film and TV that FEEL like D&D play, either in execution or silliness? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!
PuzzCulture 