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Can you offer some advice re: Flashbacks? There's not much to go on in the rules. Do players tend to narrate just one per session (assuming a session = a one-shot)?

When you say "illuminate a character's past" does that include mundane topics like "That time I went grocery shopping and they didn't have the melon I was looking for"? (Hey, we're learning that character likes a specific kind of melon!) Or are Flashbacks supposed to be relevant to the character's Trouble or the current Bounty?

What about trying to come up with new Flashbacks for the same character over a long-term campaign? That could be a lot of "past" and "motivation" to wring out of one character.

So far, my group hasn't been interacting with the Flashback mechanic, and I think that's because it doesn't seem to have a direct impact on the narrative surrounding a session's current Bounty, where all the action is.

You can have multiple Flashbacks for one character as long as they're not too same-y or uninteresting.
For the melon example, is it really "illuminating" in context? Probably not. That being said, I can imagine a scenario where it would be, because Cowboy Bebop can be really silly sometimes, and that's totally fun to play. Like if a character is obsessed with a melon that only grows on their homeworld, and they haven't been able to find one for 5 years or something. That actually *would* illuminate something about their past, and is totally something that could become something of a running gag.
The Flashbacks don't have to be connected specifically to a Trouble or Bounty. You could use a Flashback to show how you know a particular contact, or why you were kicked out of your gang, or what growing up on Venus was like, pretty much anything. It's basically a way to sneak extra "moments" into a session.
For campaign play, you can use multiple Flashbacks to show how your character's motivation has changed or deepened, explore a new facet of their past, or anything like that.

What about Leverage-style Flashbacks where we learn that the characters had prepared something ahead of time to deal with the current problem or obstacle? (Something like "Oh yeah, I did some research yesterday and set up a fake account that I can use to get past this checkpoint. Let me tell you about it..")

I'd support it. Especially if it was interesting, cool, or moody (and not just some perfunctory procedural stuff).