One time, my friend's brothers roped me and her into playing "fruits vs. vegetables" with them. The story was that we were fruits and the vegetables wanted to turn us into jelly. At first, we were playing outside and were fruit soldiers, but we got caught in the jelly maker and had to escape. (This translated into trying to get off a sled before it fell off the retaining wall, because it was winter, there was snow on the hill, and we figured that the space under the retaining wall would've held a giant vat of jelly.) Then, when we got cold and went inside, we pretended to be fruit students, but there was a teacher that was a "blueberry the size of an eggplant" (read: eggplant disguised as a blueberry) that took us on a field trip that was actually a trap so we had to save ourselves.
Another time we made a magic show faux Rube Goldberg machine called a "people machine" that basically relied on people hiding behind a corner of a mini-room under the stairs, and a lot of hand motions and fake "ingredients".