I've got several suggestions.

Tied to stakes and being interrogated by a lich about an artifact they should have found last month. This works well with a time jump were the party is sent back a year or so and actually does find the artifact so those mysterious hero's that save them and make them become adventurers are themselves a few years later.

Also going to the jail house after a bar fight with the PC's and 2 others the only survivors.

Or if its Monsters and Other Childish Things. The party all have some lose affiliations and know each other then one new kid enters the town/orphanage/halfway-home and things go from there.

Sci Fi games waking up from Cryo Sleep, Carbonite Freezing, or on a Battleship that is sitting peacefully and nothing bad happens to it.