History Film / IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull

* RecycledSoundtrack: Meta example. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGsaJpMbCTU&pp=ygUUY3J5c3RhbCBza3VsbCB0ZWFzZXI%3D Teaser Trailer]] uses [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZT03uymayk&pp=ygUPcmV2b2x1dGlvbiBkdW5l "The Revolution"]] (by Music/BrianTyler) from the ''Series/FrankHerbertsChildrenOfDune''.

* RecycledSoundtrack: Meta example. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGsaJpMbCTU&pp=ygUUY3J5c3RhbCBza3VsbCB0ZWFzZXI%3D Teaser Trailer]] uses Brian Tyler's "Revolution" from the ''Children of Dune'' mini-series.

** While teaching his class after [[spoiler: his interview with the Feds]], Indy mentions the Skara Brae archaeological site (or as he pronounces it, "Ska-ah Bray") as being on the "west coast of Scotland". Skara Brae is on the west coast of ''Mainland'', the main island of the Orkney Islands, which are just North of the Scottish mainland, not West of it. The historically significant island off the West coast of Scotland is the Isle of Skye. However, Indy ''does'' get Skara Brae's timeline right, as it was occupied long before Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids were built, and is often refered to as the "Scottish Pompeii".

** Mac also qualifies; he gets beaten up and kidnapped prior to the film, gets shot in the foot and has his nose broken by Indy, and finally [[spoiler: he gets sucked through the interdimensional portal.]]

** [[spoiler: Indy calls Mutt "Junior" at the end of the film just like his own father used to call him.]]

* DevouredByTheHorde: When a ton of man-eating ants appears, they take out several Russian soldiers, but [[spoiler: Dovchenko suffers the most when several of those ants goes inside his mouth and then they drag him into an anthill.]]

** George 'Mac' [=McHale=] is essentially a replacement for Sallah, a fan favorite character who is totally absent from this movie. Mac's character is introduced as if we already knew him from previous installments; a lot of dialog refers to his and Indy's shared past (which happened in-between movies); [[spoiler: and we are clearly supposed to care about his change of alignment from good to evil, even though we never actually got to know him first]].

** Irina wants [[spoiler: to know everything [that the aliens know]]], [[MySkullRunnethOver she gets her wish.]]

* TooStrangeToShow: The [[spoiler: dimension]] that the [[spoiler: Soviet soldiers, Mac, and the aliens end up.]]

* YoureNotMyFather: [[spoiler: Mutt towards Indy after first discovering Indy is his real father. He believed his real father was Colin Williams, his stepfather, only for Marion to reveal that she and Colin started dating when Mutt was three months old.]]

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Believe it or not, it's actually not that improbable that Indy could have survived a nuclear explosion by sheltering in a refrigerator. Explosions are funny things, and even a little bit of cover can greatly improve your survival odds, particulary with nuclear explosions where the biggest danger is from flash burns. And the refrigerator itself may well have survived intact -- those older ones are amazingly tough. Nor is radiation an automatic death sentence, and the damage can be mitigated if you get decontaminated fairly soon (hence Indy being stripped naked and scrubbed down). No, the most implausible thing is that Indy survives uninjured after being hurled into the air several hundred yards and crashing down to Earth at full speed; fridge or no fridge, [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou the impact from a fall at that speed]] would almost certainly have killed him.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Believe it or not, it's actually not ''that'' improbable that Indy could have survived a nuclear explosion by taking shelter in a refrigerator: explosions are funny things, and even a little bit of cover can have a major impact on a person's odds of survival (not to mention that older refrigerators were known for being amazingly tough). It's also not ''that'' improbable that he could have survived such a large dose of radiation: radiation isn't an automatic death sentence, and it can take ''days'' to succumb to radiation poisoning after exposure to a lethal dose--and the exposure can be mitigated if you get decontaminated fairly soon (hence Indy being stripped naked and scrubbed down) depending on the type of radiation you've been exposed to. No, the single most unrealistic thing about the infamous fridge scene is that Indy survives with zero injuries after being hurled into the air several hundred yards and crashing down to Earth at full speed; fridge or no fridge, [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou the impact from a fall at that speed]] would almost certainly have killed him in RealLife.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: No, not [[ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics nuclear physics]] for the infamous fridge. Explosions are funny things where even a little cover can make a huge difference, though an explosion that destroys everything else may or may not leave a refrigerator intact--those old ones ''are'' amazingly tough. Nor is radiation an automatic death sentence -- it can take days to succumb to radiation poisoning after exposure to a lethal dose, and the exposure can be mitigated if you get decontaminated fairly soon (hence Indy being stripped naked and scrubbed down), depending on the type of radiation you've been exposed to. However, hurling a man in a metal box into the air several hundred yards [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou is problematic for entirely different but more mundane reasons.]]

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: The "Rat Snake" used to rescue Indy and Marion is really a Papuan Python. Rat snakes do not grow that big. Even Indy lampshaded that one when Mutt tried to assure him (most likely Mutt was trying to calm the clearly-freaked Indy down).
--> '''Indy:''' Rat Snakes aren't that big.\\

* ButtMonkey: Mutt goes through a lot of abuse, as he gets punched by overprotective girlfriends, stung by scorpions, and knocked off moving Jeeps.

--> '''Ox''': Henry Jones. Junior.

* GoryDiscretionShot: The massacre of the American soldiers at the beginning of the film by the Russians is only seen in a distant shot after most of them have been downed.

* LetsGetOutOfHere: A carload of Russians looking for Indy in the nuclear test site do this with less than a minute before the bomb goes off. [[spoiler:It doesn't do them much good, as while they escape the site, the blast catches up to them and takes them out.]]

* PunctuatedForEmphasis:
** "[[Creator/CateBlanchett You vill]]. [[LargeHam Help us]]. [[invoked]][[FakeRussian Find it]]."

* RuleOfThree: "Three times it drops." As in three waterfalls, one after the other, which the protagonists go over one by one.

* TookALevelInBadass: Marion has graduated from throwing the occasional punch at her captors to [[spoiler:driving an amphibious transport off a cliff and ''onto a tree'', then letting the tree snap back and smack into the cliff-climbing Mooks behind her]].

* HollywoodMagnetism: When Indy needs to find the location of a magnetic crate, he throws gunpowder in the air and watches which way it moves. Gunpowder isn't acually magnetic, and if the magnetic field is strong enough to attract gunpowder from the other side of a large warehouse, there'd be no getting it out of the truck it's then loaded into without heavy equipment. It's later lampshaded when Mutt notes it attracts non-magnetic items like gold coins, implying it's actually a fairly arbitrary psychic force rather than real magnetism.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics:
** No, not [[ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics nuclear physics]] for the infamous fridge. Explosions are funny things where even a little cover can make a huge difference, though an explosion that destroys everything else may or may not leave a refrigerator intact--those old ones ''are'' amazingly tough. Nor is radiation an automatic death sentence -- it can take days to succumb to radiation poisoning after exposure to a lethal dose, and the exposure can be mitigated if you get decontaminated fairly soon (hence Indy being stripped naked and scrubbed down), depending on the type of radiation you've been exposed to. However, hurling a man in a metal box into the air several hundred yards [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou is problematic for entirely different but more mundane reasons.]]
** Given the inverse-square law, if the magnetic field of the skull is strong enough to attract gunpowder from the other side of a large warehouse, it would be strong enough to ensure that once placed in the bed of a truck, there'd be no getting it out of the truck without heavy equipment.

* HollywoodMagnetism: When Indy needed to find the location of a magnetic crate, he threw gunpowder in the air and watched which way it moved. Later on, this trope is lampshaded when an object attracts gold coins, which are decidedly ''not'' magnetic.

* ManlyTears: Mutt’s eyes are shiny with tears and he’s struggle not to cry in Oxley’s empty cell at the asylum as he sees evidence that Oxley went insane.

* FakeTown: After Indy escapes from the warehouse, he comes upon a suburban neighborhood and goes in looking for help. In short order, he discovers the neighborhood is entirely populated by mannequins. A short time later, he realizes he's walked into a nuclear test site and they're about to conduct the test.

* EndOfAnEra: ''Kingdom'' was the final ''Indiana Jones'' film made prior to Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012. As a result, it's the final Indy film directed by Steven Spielberg and with a story credit by George Lucas (as both creators would take a backseat as Executive Producers for ''Dial of Destiny''). This is also the final Indy film with sound design by Ben Burtt (who'd left Lucasfilm after the completion of the ''Star Wars'' Prequel Trilogy in 2005, but returned to ''Indiana Jones'' for this film) and edited by Michael Kahn.

''Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'' is a 2008 {{adventure}} film and the fourth entry in the ''Franchise/IndianaJones'' series. It is directed by Creator/StevenSpielberg, with the screenplay written by David Koepp and the story written by franchise creator Creator/GeorgeLucas and Jeff Nathanson.

* MySkullRunnethOver: The climax.

* GenreShift: Where the previous three films were heavily based on th