(I never finished this piece, I'm not happy with it in its current state, but Cohost will die soon, so I'm just going to put this very rough word salad flow of consciousness version up. Just know that after a couple more drafts it would have been really good!)
So there's this trope I like in fiction where a child escapes into a fantasy world to run away from some horrible thing they're facing in their life, but the fantasy has aspects of the reality they were trying to escape. While in this other, almost dreamlike world, they learn to deal with the horrible thing, and at the end of the story return to reality better able to cope, albeit left with the question of whether anything that they experienced was even real.
In MirrorMask, protagonist Helena's mother falls ill after an argument between the two, and Helena finds herself in a strange world in which both the evil queen who wishes to capture her, and the good queen who is stuck in an eternal slumber, are played by the same actress as her mother. It's easy to see this reflecting her inner turmoil over feeling like her mother wants to keep her from living her own life, but also that she loves her mother and is terrified of her "never waking up" from the operation she is required to have. I love this stuff!
Similarly, in Jumanji, Alan finds himself playing the titular board game and being sucked into its world after an argument with his father. And who should be pursuing him in this world but the big game hunter Van Pelt, who is of course played by the same actor as his father. I love this stuff!
The classic example of course is The Wizard of Oz, but elements of it are also present in James and the Giant Peach, Time Bandits, Spirited Away, and many others. I absolutely love this stuff, so imagine my delight when I first played Kingdom Hearts. The opening movie is trippy, and features the protagonist Sora asking questions about what is real, and what is a dream. The game begins, and Sora and his friends Riku and Kairi are building a raft, with the intent to travel to another world. Quite how this would work is never discussed, and one can attribute it to childhood whimsy. The day before they are to set off, the rivalry between Sora and Riku results in them having a race to determine who gets to name the raft, but with a twist added by Riku; the winner also gets to share a paopu fruit with Kairi, a gesture which ensures two people will be forever bound by destiny. Upon Sora winning the race, Riku insists he was just joking about the paopu (in a way that suggests he really wasn't), and a later scene with Kairi has her suggest that just she and Sora leave on the raft without Riku. It is clear that there is a rivalry between Sora and Riku for Kairi's affections, and that perhaps Kairi is leaning more towards Sora, and that Riku may not be all too happy with this. Themes of childhood friends and budding sexuality abound.
And then! Sora is lying in bed, but what's that he sees out the window? A storm, threatening to rip apart the raft he and his friends built! Rushing to the raft to try and save it, Sora realises that things are even worse than that, as the storm somehow tears the whole island apart. Malicious shadowy monsters appear, Kairi vanishes, and Riku appears to have turned evil! Sora finds himself flung into another world which features characters who look suspiciously similar to people he knew in his own, and eventually teams up with two cartoon characters who have a spaceship that just so happens to be named whatever the player chose to name the ill fated raft! What follows is an adventure to rescue Kairi from Riku clutches, but also perhaps to save Riku. I LOVE this stuff!
Or... I love stuff that I thought was there. If this was an intentional plot element, the writers abandoned it very quickly. And whatever elements of this theme may have been present are completely abandoned for every future game. Was this plot element ever even present? Did I imagine the whole thing? Were those NPCs I found in Traverse Town who looked so similar to Sora's friends back home just simple asset reuse to save budget?
This, among many other reasons, is why I find Kingdom Hearts so disappointing. I loved that first game so much, but maybe only because I saw things that weren't there. Kingdom Hearts fans talk about symbolism and what things really mean in this franchise, and how deep the story is (the logo for Kingdom Hearts 3 has a bit that isn't coloured in, this means something!), and there was a time I really thought it was true. Pretend there's more here where I write an actual conclusion!