Actually, it is the fantasy of Jim McAllister from Election, who wishes he’d been a Ferris-like student, hence gis motivation to slickly (in his mind) manipulate the election against uncool overachiever Tracy Flick.
This doesn’t seem likely. Tim Roth’s character, who is clearly not humble, looks directly into the briefcase and doesn’t melt or explode.
My personal theory about Casablanca, in which the whole plot element of the letters of transit makes little sense and ends up being pointless (as Major Strasser makes it clear that Victor Lazlo is not leaving Casablanca alive regardless of what travel documents he has) is that the entire story is a ruse by the seemingly guileless but actually ruthlessly manipulative Ilsa. Having already made a connection with the resourceful but emotionally infantile Rick, she sets him up in classic long con fashion by suddenly disappearing with only a vague notification, knowing that he would flee Paris to Casablanca or some other likely thoroughfare for refugees and expatriates, and then follows him there with her meal ticket husband in tow, first making him feel resentful but knowing that his essentially good nature and desire to be seen as the rescuer would cause him to fall on his own sword to provide her and Lazlo with the means to get to America.
Evidence in support? There was never any chance that Rick (who fought on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War and ran guns to Ethiopia against the Italians) was going to sacrifice Lazlo to the Germans. Ilsa seems absolutely too spacey to be real, and the all-too-coincidental theft of the letters of transit, supposed off-screen death of Ugarte (leaving the letters in Rick’s possession to do with what he will), and the arrival of Lazlo and Ilsa at the Café American are too perfect storm of events to be believed. Colonel Strasser seems suspiciously lacking in entourage of junior staff officers for an OF-5 on a mission to collect an escapee from a German war camp. It also makes little sense for Lazlo to be going to America to help support the Czech resistance when the Ústrední vedení odboje domácího (ÚVOD, essentiality the Czech government in exile and interface with the Czech resistance forces) as well as the Free French forces and most of the coordination with the various European resistance forces were in London, and the United States was not at that time even involved in the war effort. (I suppose it could be argued that he was going to America to drum up support, but for a man who had no apparent connections in the United States this seems more likely he would support the the ÚVOD directly from London.) More likely is that he is going to the United States to a lucrative think-tank position and post-war lecture circuit, keeping Ilsa in the style in which she wishes to become accustomed (and that she would never get with a roustabout like Rick).
Rick, of course, is so beguiled by Ilsa that he doesn’t notice just how absurd this plot is or the bait-and-switch that being played at him, to the point that at the (perfect) tip-off, he doesn’t even notice that the airplane behind him is a cardboard mockup being serviced by midgets. Captain Renault, for his part, may be a co-conspirator, but I suspect that the participants observed his transparent homosexual longings for Rick and appealed to his essentially straightforward nature, being an “honest” cop (“one who stays bought”), he is easily motivated and predicted. In the end, Rick gives away everything he owns and is become a fugitive wanted for murder (faked; Ilsa replaced the rounds in the magazine of his pistol with blanks during her post-coital trip to the bathroom), while Ilsa has free passage to America and is on her way to riding the gravy train for life. Ilsa is a nasty piece of work, that most deadly of femme fatales, one that never reveals herself. She could give Kathy Moffet or Phyllis Detriechson a run for their money without breaking a sweat.
Stranger