The fear of being abandoned by one's parents (Hansel and Gretel), or of being destroyed by (or destroying) a parent or sibling – always disguised as, say, a "wicked stepsister" or "stepmother" – recurs again and again, allowing children to access their darker fantasies.
The East End shoot-out at the end of The Man Who Knew Too Much inevitably recalls the Sidney Street siege, and memories of murderous continental anarchists; here Lorre was an émigré actor touching on the nation's darkest fantasies of an immigrant intrusion.
I especially like his Elizabethan fantasies, Nothing Like the Sun and A Dead Man in Deptford.
Fantasies aside, KC still need to take care of business on Saturday, they need a win against a Philadelphia Union team that is currently outside the playoffs, but can get in with a win and some help.
I've confronted some painful fantasies: that longing of old, the sense of "home", the Italy of my childhood – constructs of great sentiment, but of imagination more than reality.
For decades, in Tarzan movies, it was the subject of fake Hollywood fantasies.
Every August Lorient, on the south coast of Brittany, hosts the Interceltic Festival of music (festival-interceltique.com) where you can live out your Asterix and Obelix fantasies.
"George Clooney's engaged!" She rolls her eyes: "Oh, who cares?" …"Who to?" Yesterday, the Guardian's Ryan Gilbey took the sanguine view that this news was "unlikely" to have any impact on the dreams and fantasies of Clooney's audience who after all, he suggests, are "older" and have "enough experiences" to cope with the idea that glorious George ("silver-fox/commitment-phobe") is in fact taken.
Like many actors, Fassbender, who sings and plays guitar and keyboards in the film, admits he once harboured fantasies of rock stardom.
Even if the stories we tell about human love are over-romanticised fantasies, it might still be important that we fall for them.
Then there are imaginary friends that are not hallucinations but vivid fantasies, which have been the subject of much adult hand-wringing over the years.
