Ripped off the basic GoT characetr concept for Jamie Lannister, applied it to a female Paladin's backstory (oath prohibits marriage, and Paladin is Lord Dad's favorite, so he's pissed). The very next session, the Paladin died.:-/ So much for concepts in the early game.

Super villain crew based of Marvel's Abner Jenkins, AKA The Beetle.  They're known as 'The Bug Squad'.  4 Power Armour based mercenaries in insect themed suits.

Well, two days ago I was doing some Star-Wars parody in my DCC campaign, complete with a pilot who's a kind of cross between Han Solo and Lando Calrissian through the lens of a blacksploitation movie, a bear as Chewbacca, hapless stormtroopers, hiding out in an asteroid field, and even a lightsaber duel.

Quote from: Elfdart;995149Cadfael: The monastery, the monks, the sheriff, the village -just about everything, only with the names and serial numbers filed off.

Brother Deseal (Cadfael) and Sherrif Trebidar (Beringar) are reoccurring characters I tend to put in PC starting towns. I like towns roughly equivalent to Shrewsbury as a starting place, because they are somewhat "out in the sticks," but also on major transit roads. It is a good boundary region where one can go out into the wilds and make your fortune, or go set out for a major city, and just enough commerce and expertise in town to maybe buy what you need/get your questions answered.

As to what I've most recently borrowed, this one is accidental: I created a ruling family (counts) who are newly minted royalty. Based on actions, it is the story of Bronn from GoT (ignoble soldier became indispensable to someone in charge and was rewarded with title and land), but after I made the characters, I realized that I totally had modeled them on the Beverly Hillbillies.

Ha!  Now you just need to spend the next 4 seasons trying to get Ellie May a Husband.

the book Tigana, you have an overlord who has taken over a kingdom, and is using magic to prevent anyone from the nation he conquered from remembering the nation's name.  So long as he lives the spell stays in effect.

I ran an Earthdawn game where there was a Horror that couldn't be defeated by a group of warriors, so they made it forget who and what it was.  They performed a major work of Blood Magic to basically take the best aspects of themselves and create an entirely new person who was basically the daughter of all of them.  She was the key to the spell, and she was sent out to hide the weapons and armor that the group carried, so that a new group could take up their legend.  She would find a place to hide out, and look for a group she thought was worthy, and would train them and lead them to the artifacts.  The problem was that the better the PCs became, and the more they adopted the roles (however imperfectly) of the previous warriors, the more she started to unravel, so to speak, and the more the Horror could draw upon its true nature.

The other problem was that the PCs had no idea WHERE this Horror had been placed by the previous group.