The origin of the Owlbear would be a cool idea, but I tend to take ingredients figuratively, not literally.
That said, I would be somewhat surprised if anyone came up with similar things to me, simply because I'm kinda perverse in that way. I look at the ingredients and think, YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!
Which may explain why I don't win these things....
That said ...
Once I went with the whole "Gamma World" vibe because of Owlbear, everything snapped into place when I looked at the City in a Bottle. For me, the classic City in a Bottle is Logan's Run. This started me thinking about two things- that Logan's Run (and other "city in a bottle" futuristic scenarios) always have things not be what they first appear, and the classic tropes of '70s and '80s B movies, as we normally see in Corman and Golan & Globus (Cannon) productions.
The desert with a mix of "normal things" that are shot in a way to make them seem threatening (like dogs) and the borrowed sci-fi elements (always, always, always something under the ground .... almost as if Dune was influential). The weird plot elements that seem plausible, yet don't quite make sense (what does an injection have anything to do with an energy field that works on your eyes?). The main characters just get more aggro as the movie goes on, fighting everything. And they get better at fighting, too! The choices that were made because of budget (the exterior is a hill, but the interior of the lair is just rooms with food and stuff, almost like it was filmed in a regular building interior ... all of the people in the lair appear to be the same type of mutant hybrid because then you can re-use the same costume, etc.). The person who is with the party until ... they suddenly turn on them for
reasons. And, of course, the idea that this is all occurring at some point in the distant future, and yet you can find a still-functioning nuclear warhead. Because isn't there always a still-functioning nuclear warhead?
I love those movies so much! And as I always say,
The less you think about it, the more it makes sense!
As always, I couldn't tell if my references were too obvious, or not obvious enough. I did have one regret, which I will explain after the judges eviscerate me.
