WMG / Indiana Jones

A grown-up Short Round will appear in Indiana Jones 5

Why? Because it would be so cool, that's why!

• After he and Mutt meet they'll start fighting over every little thing, because of Mutt's jealousy.
  • Assuming there will be a fifth movie. As of now, it sounds pretty much unlikely, even though this troper would love to see it.
    • As of May 2015, plans for a fifth movie are underway, and Spielberg has confirmed that Ford would be expected to reprise.
    • More confirmation in March 2016. However, there are no plans for Shia LeBeouf to return
• Jossed, sadly.

Indiana Jones 5 will be set in China during the Cultural Revolution

It will feature the Dropa Stones.

• Probably not, because Chinese censorship would be wary of a film that may come off as being critical of Mao Zedong, and Disney wouldn't want to lose the Chinese box office.
  • Jossed, with the release of this trailer.

Indy has bad vision in one eye

Indy is nearsighted in only one eye. His eyes naturally adapted to favor the good eye, giving him 20/20 monocular vision. The "leap of faith" in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade then makes slightly more sense, as Indiana Jones has no depth perception.

"Damn, I thought that was closer."

• Old Indy from the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles wore an eyepatch. His eye was lost in an unspecified event.
  • In Oganga, The Giver and Taker of Life Indy catches a blast of steam in the face (the right side) when the boiler of the boat he's on is hit by a bullet, so that may account for his poor depth perception later in life.

Temple of Doom was All a Dream

Ok, Ok, stay with me here. Indiana was poisoned right at the beginning of the film. He then supposedly survived a plane crash, fought people who could pull still-beating hearts from the chests of their victims and was followed around by the whiniest, stupidest female in Jone's history. The events of Temple of Doom were a poison dream that Indy had before he got the antidote. He woke up in America, and went on with his life and the last crusade. Taken this way, the other movies make more sense....they are all about Indy's family. The first one is aobut him and the love of his life, the second about his father, and the the third about the third generation and Indy being reunited with Marion. makes perfect sense. (yeah yeah, but this is WMG, after all!)

• One thing: Temple of Doom was set before Raiders of the Lost Ark. This actually makes the above troper's "family arc" theory more plausible in that this was Indy's life before he cemented his relationship with Marion. "Temple of Doom" provides us a look at Indy's "swingin' single" days, and why he gave them up.

Han Solo and Chewbacca crashed on Earth in the distant past, with Han becoming Indy's ancestor and Chewy becoming Bigfoot

This was forwarded by a non-canonical but Lucasfilm-authorized Star Wars comic.

• Nitpick: the comic didn't actually tie Jones and Solo in any way - Han actually died not long after the crash, and his body was found by Indy.
• A proposed book, which would have been authorized by Lucasfilm, would have tied the mythos of THX 1138, American Graffiti, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones together.
  • And because that book has yet to be made, is why I have doubts in a benevolent god.
    • Definitely. If there was a benevolent god, they would be making a movie, not writing a book.
    • Actually, there is a piece of background decorum in Raiders with engravings of R2-D2 and C-3P0 on it, though it's difficult to see clearly. They show it up close and expound upon it in the DVD extras for the box set.

Neither Spalko nor the aliens have any psychic abilities.

Lots of bizarre things happen in the fourth movie but, despite all the talk of psychic powers, there's no evidence of their ever working. The crystal skull could easily be just a high-tech hallucinogen, and all the "messages" from it could be imaginary. Even when Ox speaks for the alien, he doesn't provide any new information.

• If the aliens didn't have psychic abilities, then how do you explain Spalko's Your Head Asplode moment?
  • That was an overdose of the hallucinogen. VR sometimes does that in films; this probably works a little like that.
• What about when Indy is given a dose of the crystal skull, and Ox (who can't see what's going on in the tent) suddenly perks up, saying, "Henry Jones Jr.!" It's clearly implied that Indy looking into the skull's eyes caused Ox to recognize him, which couldn't have occurred without some kind of psychic communication.
  • But it could. Ox was an old friend of Indy; he could have known him all along but was unable to communicate it properly, or he could have not registered who was with him until then... In his state of mind, there's all kinds of mundane possibilities.

Spalko won in the end.

The great gift the aliens offered wasn't just knowledge, but also a trip to their home dimension. Human bodies aren't suited to the trip. That moment wasn't Your Head Asplode so much as it was Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.

• But it must have been painful, and probably not as expected. Pyrrhic Victory, anyone?
  • Not really. Human bodies probably can't survive the trip; sure, the ascent is painful (to put it mildly); but after that, this would be everything she ever wanted. Some people want the Singularity. And the good guys aren't left out in the cold — she can't help Stalin anymore.
    • Stalin died in 1952. Crystal Skull is set in 1957.
    • She can't help Bulganin anymore.

The series has a reversal of Star Trek's even-odd rules.

The odd-numbered ones (Raiders and Last Crusade) are usually regarded as better than the even-numbered ones (Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull), forming an inverse of the rules which determine which Star Trek films are good.

• But Nemesis, which was the 10 Star Trek movie, bombed. Its failure derailed Star Trek's movie series for several years, thereby breaking the "even-odd" rule.
  • Nemesis reversed the polarity for Star Trek films. (Maybe the rule for them was, if it makes an odd number after "casting nines," it'll be bad.) So, odd numbered Indiana Jones films will be excellent through Indiana Jones 9, then Indiana Jones 10 will be excellent, and then Indiana Jones 11 will be meh.
  • Galaxy Quest was the tenth Star Trek movie. Ergo, Nemesis is in-fact an odd-numbered title, and the prequel is an even-numbered title.
• These "even-odd" rules are just superstitions in the guise of "rules" or insincerely only half-meant "jokes". They never work, except maybe by pure fluke. People say the same thing about Beethoven, that you should listen only to his odd-numbered symphonies, but this deliberately overlooks the sixth being universally considered one of his finest. In fact, the fourth symphony alone among all of the nine blows chunks.
  • Agreed. It's like the Madden 'curse' that supposedly affects athletes on the cover of the Madden football games... ignoring the fact that generally 50% or more of football players get injured in some way in any given scene.

Indy is a distant cousin of James Bond.

Indy's dad was Scottish; Bond is of Scottish descent. It is not out of the realm of possibility for a cousin of Henry Jones Sr. to be part of the Bond Family. Also, Indy's father and Bond have an uncanny resemblance...

• Note also that James Bond was a major influence on Indy. Steven Spielberg wanted to do a Bond movie when George Lucas told him he had "something better".
• His dad is played by Sean Connery, who was the original James Bond.
• This may be deliberate; Spielberg has admitted that Connery was cast because, after much angsting, he and Lucas decided that James Bond was Indiana Jones' dad.
  • The wrong way round, surely! Jones is active in the 30s/40s/50s and Bond is 60s/"Present Day". Indy is James Bond's dad!
    • I'm sure that by "James Bond was Indiana Jones' dad" the troper meant something more like "James Bond is the spiritual precursor of Indy."
    • So Shia LeBeouf is James Bond?
• All the more likely since the new Casino Royale essentially canonized the idea that "James Bond" is a moniker attached to the 007 rating. The odds of Indy sharing genes with any one of an untold number of past 007 agents are not small...
  • Sorry, no, Casino Royale (2006) didn't "essentially canonize" that idea; it Jossed it all to hell. He's called James Bond before he's given his 00 status.
    • Really belongs more on the James Bond WMG page, but...it only Jossed the idea that the Bond identity is attached to the 007 number automatically. It did NOT Joss, and in fact strongly indicated, that "James Bond" is a cover identity (hence M's "when I knew you were you" line.") All of which goes along with other little hints like Lazenby's "This never happened to the other fellow." So (to tie this back in) Indy's Dad has a Scottish cousin who becomes the first James Bond.
    • No. Even if it wasn't Jossed by Casino Royale, Skyfall most certainly did.
    • As well, however improbably, the Lazenby Bond *is* the same Bond. When he's resigning he goes over mementos from his previous missions. Furthermore, Blofeld was already on his third actor by that point.

Alternately, Indy is a distant cousin of Alan Quatermain.

Quatermain looks suspiciously like Indy's dad, too, and he's also a Gentleman Adventurer.

• The movie version?
• Bond and Indy could still be related by way of tracing their ancestry to Quatermain. I've often felt that Bond himself looks a bit like Quatermain (yes, the movie version)... sometimes, anyway.

The Aliens are of the same race as those from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Besides the similar appearance, they both are willing to give knowledge. The imagery of Spalko being absorbed is similar to a cut scene from CE3K in which Roy Neary entered the spacecraft.

• If Indy and American Graffiti are set in the same universe (as a theory above suggests), does that mean Curt Henderson and Roy Neary are the same person?
  • Not necessarily. Curt could be Roy Neary's granddad.
  • ...or a parallel universe version of him. Remember, the interdimensional beings in Crystal Skull?

Alternatively: the aliens are the Whills, who wrote the eponymous Journal.

Indy wasn't poisoned in Temple of Doom.

The glass he drank didn't contain any poison, and the antidote was fake. The whole thing was just a bluff used by Lao Che to get the diamond back. Indy felt pains from the supposed poison because of the power of suggestion. This explains why Lao was Carrying the Antidote.

Indy could have stopped WWII from happening in Europe.

The war in the Pacific was going to happen whether we like it or not. HOWEVER if Indy failed to destroy the plane that was about to take the Ark to Germany, Knowing how impatient Hitler was, he would have demanded to see it upon arrival without Belloq's approval. They would have opened the Ark before Hitler and most likely it would have melted his face off. The Ark would have been locked away in a giant secret warehouse/bunker anyways because the Nazi's can't use it.

• Then some other Nazi with more common sense shows up instead and WW2 changes drastically, with either good or bad results in the long run. good being the soviet union falls apart, then allies defeat via invasion from the Mediterranean instead of d-day, which leads to no cold war and democracy in most nations of the world because Stalin will be in no position to demand the eastern European nations, or support communist china, or creating north Korea, leading to the U.S. not feeling the need to install dictators in power, leading to slow development of democracies instead of rushing to put in something that can fight a war. that, or they get nukes and the world is devastated by nuclear war.
  • Extremely unlikely. The Nazis were pretty much not going to defeat the Soviets, and even assuming the Soviets were defeated, the Nazis would no longer be fighting on two fronts, so any Allied invasion would face at least twice the resistance. And on top of that, Italy, by virtue of being so mountainous, was harder to fight in than Normandy.
    • So, the genocidal slaughter of millions and millions of Soviet people would have been a good thing just because democracy?

Hitler was never going to weaponize the Ark of the Covenant.

The theory above says that Indy could've ended the war by letting Belloq bring the Ark to Germany, but it wouldn't have worked out. Why? Because the real-life Hitler didn't believe in magic- that was Himmler's deal, as outlined on the Ghostapo page. However, Hitler did appreciate the value of symbolism. So, instead of sticking the Ark on a tank and driving through Europe, Hitler would have put the famous Jewish relic on display, as a sign that the Nazis were now God's chosen people- and maybe add in some crap about how the Ark was really an Aryan relic that the Jews stole- and then gone back to his Wunderwaffe.

• Pretty much confirmed by George Lucas himself here.
  • ... But Red Skull was.

Indy escaped the worst consequences of being blacklisted by McCarthy because he drank from the Grail and rescued the Shankara Stones.

In the beginning of Crystal Skull, Indy is blacklisted. This is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Thing, and not just in terms of narrative; people's lives were ruined forever by the blacklisting. When we see him at the end of the movie, the whole thing seems to have been forgotten. Either he managed to slide out of the country while the FBI and CIA were still trying to figure out what exactly happened in South America and lived as an ex-pat, or his blacklisting was somehow undone. We know the Grail didn't make him immortal because his father died, but maybe some sort of protection was extended to him anyway; after all, he'd done (several) immense services to the "unreal" world. Maybe someone Up There had an eye out for Indy; we've seen that the supernatural is a potent force, no matter what Dr. Jones believes. The Ark doesn't count, alas, because he didn't really rescue it, you know?

• Alternatively, Indy escaped the worst consequences of being blacklisted by McCarthy because he had done the government so many favors. While McCarthy and some overzealous FBI agents are trying to wreck his life, his old war buddies, possibly including powerful men like President Eisenhower and the leaders of the CIA (who would remember Jones from his work for the OSS), get word of what's happening and intervene.
  • It could be both.
  • Again, Crystal Skull takes place in 1957, McCarthy was censured in 1954, which didn't kill the anti-communist witch hunting entirely, but enough that respected scholars and former goverment agents like Indy would have simply laughed at being blacklisted, knowing it would last all of the fifteen seconds it took for someone to actually look at his record. If anything the guy that put Indy on the list would be in serious trouble once the higher-ups got wind of it.

The grail doesn't just extend your life, it makes you immortal.

In the previous films, Indy always tries as hard as possible to scrabble out of the way of anything potentially lethal (whether or not he succeeds). But in the fourth film, he finds the deadly merely unpleasant. He is almost fearless. He knows that Ox was talking about two more possibly deadly waterfalls after dropping down the first, but he doesn't seem to try to avoid them. He balks at grabbing the snake and makes an offhand remark about hitting the bottom of the sandpit. He says that he should go into the city alone. He almost never tries to escape the Russkies on his own initiative. He survives an atomic bomb blast at almost point blank range with only a refrigerator for a shelter. He ends up taking just as much of a beating as in his previous films; but he never seems to feel as battered and exhausted, even though he's older. Oh, and his dad? They never show him; he isn't dead because he can't die. Neither of them can. His only worries in this film are protecting the lives of others, keeping his Healing Factor-based immortality secret from everyone, and avoiding especially unpleasant deaths.

• Maybe Indy is Jack Harkness and hence, by extension, the Face of Boe.
• Indy's father drank from the Grail. Indy's father is dead. The Grail, therefore, does not confer immortality based on one-time drinking. QED.
  • You never saw a corpse, so you must assume he's not dead. How can you ever hope to become an evil overlord if you don't know the basics?
    • My theory is that it makes you only able from natural causes like old age, but unable to be killed by anything else like, for example, an atomic bomb.
    • Alternately, Dr. Jones Sr. faked his death and went into hiding to prevent word from getting out that he's immortal, just in case any Top Men decide to cut him up. Either Indy is playing along to protect his father, or genuinely doesn't know.
• As much as this would explain nuking the fridge, I was always under the impression that Indy and his dad ceased to be immortal once they passed the "Great Seal," as the Grail Knight tells Indy: "You have chosen... wisely. But, beware: the Grail cannot pass beyond the Great Seal, for that is the boundary, and the price, of immortality."
  • That's not conjecture nor your impression, that's canonically explicit fact.

The Holy Grail only gives you one extra life

The Grail basically gives you "another guy" in video game terms, or a single "Get out of Jail/Death Free" card. Henry SR was almost dead when he drank from the cup, so he cashed it in then, healed his wounds, he then grew old and died. Indy was perfectly healthy when he drank from it, so it gave him an extra life, which he used to survive the atom bomb blast.

The Crystal Skull was magnetic

Gold isn't magnetic. But a magnetic substance, especially an alien one, could look like gold.

• So Spaniards in the 17th century minted coins with alien metal? Or ancient Incans did?

The Grand Alien Theory...

The Musical Aliens (in Close Encounters of the Third Kind) have been locked in a deadly war with the Crystal Aliens for millions of years. The Crystal Aliens made contact with the humans first, intent on looking for some advantage against their cousins.

The Musical Aliens have a major weakness — they are unwilling to interfere with other cultures and are benevolent to a fault. After learning that the Crystal Aliens secretly invaded ancient Earth, the Musical Aliens, too busy fighting elsewhere to act directly, chose to observe rather than risk causing further damage to humanity.

The Crystal Aliens quickly learned that Earth gave them no major advantage, but a few rogues did discover that humans are... well, tasty. Earth's rich geological resources also intrigued them, and so they become obsessed with grabbing everything in sight and screwing with humanity... for fun. This never was approved by the Crystal Alien leaders. They allowed the humans to disable the largest hive mind on Earth with some simple trickery, resulting in the members of Akator's 13 being trapped on Earth.

The rest of the rogue Crystal Aliens were promptly arrested by the grand emperor, who found it pleasing to let the Akator 13 suffer for their indulgence. Their glory faded. The captured rogues were sentenced to death. But a few managed to convince the emperor that humans are... well, tasty. So he agreed to allow several science teams to abduct humans through the centuries, performing tests on them while they were in cryostasis. These people were eventually rescued by the Musical Aliens when they got a foothold on Crystal Alien territory and started kicking ass with music.

Unfortunately, in the 1950s on Earth, Indiana Jones unwittingly returned the missing member of the hive mind, allowing the Akator 13 to escape. The 13 staged a coup and killed the emperor, leading the Crystal Aliens in a new attack on the Musical Aliens. But the 13 chose to ignore Earth right then, and the Musical Aliens slipped in and contacted humanity in the late 1970s. They released the people who had been kidnapped by the Crystal Aliens and imparted information to a young child, information about their civilization in case they are annihilated. They also picked up a brave man who they discovered could offer his services as unofficial ambassador.

The Musical Aliens continued to wage war against the Crystal Aliens and eventually drove them back far into space until both civilizations were decimated, becoming nothing more than a memory, a record in the mind of a person who was now an old man on Earth...

Irina Spalko was the protege of Rasputin from Hellboy

Ever notice how similar Spalko is to Rasputin? And why would the Communists have any interest in the paranormal? Answer: Spalko is Rasputin's protege.

Hellboy himself was a protege of Indy's

Because that would just be too cool.

• By extension Hellboy was raised on Hangar 51.
  Indy catches a glimpse of young Hellboy, who's been tailing him unseen
  Indy: What was that?
  Musgrove: Uh... what was what?

Lara Croft was also a protege/student of Indy's

Because that also would be too cool.

Elsa Schneider was a virgin.

Although it's clear he finds her very attractive, Indy doesn't seem to care for her — he certainly doesn't spend much time mourning her death — and yet she says of spending the night with him, "I'll never forget how wonderful it was."

"She talks in her sleep."

Building on the Indy Is James Bond's Cousin guess, Indy Is the original James Bond's Son.

The second James Bond (third 007 or later) used archaeological expeditions as excuses for his extended absences, and MI6 gave him crash courses in archaeology to make it plausible. After Henry Jones retired and was replaced, losing the accent he used for cover on missions, he went into archaeology for real. (The James Bond played by Sean Connery would be a different Bond than the one who was Indy's dad.)

• No, no, no. James Bond is a Time Lord. Before regenerating into George Lazenby, Sean Connery went back in time and decided to work as an archeologist for a while using the same device that The Doctor used to become human, where he eventually sired Indy. Of course, the events of The Last Crusade reawakened his memories of his life as a secret agent, so he returned to the 60's and continued his role as James Bond.
• How about this: As noted before, drinking from the Holy Grail gave both Dr. Joneses immortality. However, the immortality doesn't activate until after death, thus allowing for the existence of Elderly!Eyepatched!Indy in the 1990s. Therefore, it's after Jones Sr. "died" sometime prior to 1957 that he took on the 007/James Bond identity. Of course, something went horribly wrong during his tenure, leading to his subsequent imprisonment by MI6.

The child Maharajah is the father of Khan from Star Trek.

Well, why can't Zalim Singh be related to Khan Noonien Singh?

• Mostly because Singh is a religious surname, not one of necessary direct lineage. They could both be Sikhs, though.
  • "Singh" is THE most common surname in India, and for those who don't have it as a last name, it's usually given to boys as a middle name. Both Sikhs? Maybe. Related? Highly unlikely.

The majority of the fourth movie is Indy's Dying Dream as he is killed by the nuclear blast.

Let's be honest: No One Could Survive That!. Assuming that Indy is, despite his adventures, still an ordinary human, then there's something fishy going on here. This can be backed up by the plot of the movie: the reappearance of his old flame Marion Ravenwood (whom he marries at the end of the film), the son he never had (after losing his own father not long before), his vindication by the government and promotion at school (after a fashion), and one last grand adventure (with aliens!) all point to Indy's subconscious giving him everything he most desired before he finally bit the big one. The True Ending of the film is either Army personnel finding a charred corpse in a refrigerator at the test site, or Indy dying of severe radiation poisoning some hours or days afterwards.

• A famous person on the internet agrees with you, it must be true!

The spirits in the Ark of the Covenant are of all the people who had previously opened the Ark.

The bodies of Belloq and all the Nazis are swept up into a whirlwind, which goes back into the Ark.

Marcus Brody suffered a degenerative mental disease

• In Raiders (1936) he is a competent curator but feels too weak for the field work.
  Five years ago I would have gone after the Ark myself
• In Crusade (1938) he is notably less serious and competent, and shows clear signs of starting to lose touch with the world. He even got lost in his own museum.
  • Spielberg is a huge Tintin fan, and Marcus getting lost is likely a tribute to Professor Calculus, who is quite brilliant but absent minded. (As well, Indy is not exactly a good example of what real archaeologists do)
  • I think people read too much into that "shift". It's possible that Marcus was good at (and a huge fan of) field work - but the respectable, legitimate, by-the-book kind of fieldwork, where everything's been cleared by the proper authorities, there are teams of professional diggers to assist you and do the heavy lifting, etc. Stealing artifacts from under the noses of a Nazi army isn't exactly conventional archaeology, even the "field work" kind. Thus, he's completely out of his depth for in Crusade as he and Indy are doing everything {{Indy Ploy on the fly]], operating without a safety net, and in the middle of a ton of fighting, none of which he'd be used to. He thought he'd love to go after the Ark (or the Grail), but it turned out not to be the kind of field work he was used to.
• In Skull (1957) he has been dead for some years.
  • He served as Dean of Students of Marshall College until 1944, so it's unlikely, unless the Dean is not as important as I've been lead to believe. Flanderization, maybe?
  • Or possibly a case of being Kicked Upstairs into a sinecure which would allow him to retain his dignity as he deteriorated while lower-level college officials did all the actual work.
• This is further implied after the release of the recent Indiana Jones Adventures comics, set in 1930/31, where Brody acts as Indy's competent sidekick and almost qualifies as the Only Sane Man.

Spalko didn't die in Crystal Skull.

She was beamed up to the ship and brought to a psychic library in their homeworld. If their treasure was knowledge (and knowledge was their treasure), and they were willing to share it rather than punish her for trying to steal their treasure, it makes sense that they would try to accommodate the one human being who appreciated their treasure.

The skull is literally selectively magnetic

• ...And doing its best to mess with everybody's heads.

Indy started carrying two guns after Temple Of Doom

• At various points in Raiders (which chronologically takes place after Temple), Indy's gun changes from a revolver to an automatic. This was not a continuity error, he just switched between guns between (camera) shots based on ammo supply. He started carrying two guns as a form of "ditzy bint who chucks my gun out a car window for vaguely defined reasons" insurance.

The Ark of the Covenant found in Raiders was France's April Fools joke gone horribly wrong.

• Indy simply found an elaborate prop France originally set up for England that just happens to look like the real thing unconsciously. The sight of France popping out full frontal was Verboten for the eyes of mortal men, especially Nazis.

Related to the Hetalia theory above, Indy is related to Alfred F. Jones.

Indy and his father's line descends from one of Alfred's early "adventures" in courtship. It explains the otherwise daring, brash and headstrong attitude of the explorer. It probably also helped in letting Indy into government secrets in the events leading up to Crystal Skull.

• You know what else this would explain? Why he's nicknamed after one of the 50 states.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull isn't a Genre Shift- every film has aliens.

• If Sufficiently Advanced Aliens are responible for the Crystal Skull, why not the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara stones and the Holy Grail? If the aliens in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are worshipped as the Mayan gods, why not the Biblical God, or the Hindu Gods?

Temple of Doom is a Deconstructive Parody of the first film.

• Through Willie (and the waiter killed at the start), the audience is asked "You still want to follow Indy in his adventures?"
  • "Anything Goes" was a word of warning to anyone watching. In this film, anything (human sacrifices, child slavery, eating disgusting dishes) goes for your viewing.

Drinking from the Grail gives you more than immortal life.

• It also gives you a limited amount of invulnerability. Unlike extending your life, the invulnerability lasts until it gets used: and for Indy, that was surviving a nuclear blast in a lead-lined refrigerator.

The aliens did give them a gift.

• But it wasn't knowledge like they expected. Instead, they gave Ox his mind back: a fitting parting gift, a reward for returning the skull as well as fixing their mistake. They never intended on giving humanity anything more advanced than the most basic technology, either because they liked being seen as gods or have some rule against it. As for Spalko and the Russians: they'd just killed what was left of their civilisation. They were punishing them: the Russians and Mack get sucked into oblivion, Spalko dies from information overload. Hey, they may be just, but they don't have to be benevolent.
  • I saw it as this, the gift was giving them what was appropriate. Indy and co just wanted to have Ox's mind fixed and to go home. Spanko wanted their knowledge, but she wanted to use it so the Russians could rule the world with it. So Indy's group gets to go free, but the Russians found out that you should be careful what you wish for.

Indy is a jaegerkin with his teeth filed down and his accent covered up.

• He never lets his hat get very far, for one. The movies always make sure everyone knows about the hat. For another, no mere mortal could survive the refrigerator incident.

Mac was having a relationship with Spalko.

Money wasn't the only reason why he was going back.

Spalko wished to "know" everything, and got her wish.

Along with everything else, she knew pain, then death. Firsthand. She may also have known eternal life, depending on the aliens' power, whether or not they gave her an Eternity Inside, Instant Outside experience, and how the afterlife works in the Indiana Jones multiverse.

The Secret Government Warehouse at the end of Raiders isn't Area 51.

This does contradict Crystal Skull, but anyways. The warehouse they put the Ark into is just a perfectly normal warehouse full of paperwork, boots, cartridges, paperwork, engine oil, paperwork, and paperwork. The Ark isn't lost again because it's in some Government Conspiracy base; rather, the well-intentioned but not terribly on-the-ball people in charge just dumped it into the bureaucracy, whence it was swept away, never to be seen again. The Ark is probably in Newport News, except that one time they accidentally shipped it to Sacramento in place of an engine block.

• Or maybe Area 51 just hadn't been built yet in 1936.
• According to The Other Wiki, it's Hangar 51, no relation to the Real Life Area 51.
  • To be more precise, Hangar 51 appears to be a nod to both Area 51 and Hangar 18 near Ohio, another military test site often associated with government coverups in conspiracy lore. Exactly what that means about it as far as correlating to real life sites, I leave up to you.

Twilight Sparkle and Timon from The Lion King (1994) are incarnations of Indy.

Ex. 1: Twilight Sparkle hates snakes.
Ex. 2: Timon says "Hyenas. I hate Hyenas," right before he's forced to be live bait.

The Grail's effects are temporary.

The knight was still alive because he kept drinking from it. This also explains why the knight didn't completely stop aging. Henry Sr. died because the effects of the Grail wore off.

• The knight did say the effects of the grail would not work once one walked past the seal in the floor.
  • He said the Grail itself cannot be taken past the Great Seal on the floor. The reason why Henry Sr. eventually died of old age was because his use of the Grail was to recover from a mortal wound. Indy was perfectly healthy when he drank from it which is why the effects of the grail allow him to be so spry well into his sixties.
    • He said "You have chosen... wisely. But, beware. The Grail cannot pass beyond the Great Seal, for that is the boundary, and the price, of immortality." What that means is if you cross the Great Seal, you are no longer immortal.
    • In the Novelization of Crusade, the knight explains that the reason he's aged so much is that for every day he didn't drink from the Grail, he aged a year.

The Indiana Jones series takes place in the Stargate-verse

The Ark of the Covenant is actually an Ancient superweapon like the Ark of Truth, and given its fire-like effects may actually have been an Ori invention.

• Kali was a Goa'uld who later became a System Lord known for her brutality and was featured in the show. The Sankara Stones were Goa'uld crystal devices.
• The Holy Grail's ability to maintain a life for hundreds of years is similar to the Telchak Device's ability to heal and revive, assumed to be the origin of the Fountain of Youth myth. The Holy Grail was secretly developed by Ra to replace the imperfect Sarcophagus and thus ended up lost in his area of influence.
• Crystal Skull aliens existing in a separate dimension to our own, with temples located in South America? Stargate actually had an episode with those!

Henry Jones Sr. faked his death and became the new grail guardian

The Grail guardian knight that Indy met was extremely old and frail. Even with the Grail extending his life, he clearly did not have the vigor to do much defending of the Grail, seeing as he toppled over from just lifting his sword. Henry Jones Sr. saw the knight, and likely asked Indy for every minute detail of the trek to retrieve the Grail. Knowing that someone else would eventually find the Grail's hiding place, Henry Sr. chose to fake his own death and become the Grail's guardian.

• The entire cave fell apart and the Grail fell into the abyss. There's nothing left to guard.

Raiders: The Brits are in from the beginning

They know that the Nazis are up to no good, but they aren't going to start an international incident over denying permission for an archaeological excavation, let alone in the period of Appeasament when they know that Britain is not ready for war. So they pass the intelligence to the Americans and agree that the Yanks will find about the exact nature of the Nazis plans and deal with it more or less quietly.

The Brothers of the Cruciform Sword from Last Crusade are Assassins

Italy (and Turkey, for that matter) were where the Assassins were strongest for quite some time thanks to Ezio, but by World War II were in decline, what with most of the major European powers being controlled by the Templars and all. The Brothers of the Cruciform Sword are the successors/descendants of the Turkish Assassins formerly stationed in Constantinople who hid the true identity of their organization from Indy and others (mainly by changing their name and symbol). They were trying to keep the Grail—actually a Piece of Eden of some kind—from falling into Templar hands by any means necessary. Indy isn't a Templar or an Assassin, so aside from their first encounter in Venice, they had no reason to obstruct him, but they did with the Nazis, who are led by the Templars whether they know it or not.

• The Ark is probably a Piece of Eden, too, some kind of weapon more similar to the Swords of Eden rather than an Apple or Staff.
• But the Cruciform Swords are actually descended from the actual Knights Templar, if I remember the backstory.
• Alternatively, the Grail Knights are a splinter faction of the Templars who want nothing to do with the Assassin-Templar conflict and simply guard a holy artifact.
  • Another alternative is that they were straight up evil Templars who were working with Donovan the whole time, plotting to get ahold of the Grail, hence why they only ever seriously impeded Indy and never Donovan, eventually realizing his determination can be used to their advantage instead. By extension Indy has himself become a Templar pawn; at first the Templars wanted to get rid of him to avoid him stumbling onto them, but Joseph McCarthy (face it, definite Templar) decided to simply promise a revocation of that blacklist if he continues to gather artifacts for (what Indy assumes is) the US government.

Indiana Jones is a Time Lord.

Don't hit me! Think about it: he does not believe in magic in Raiders, which takes place 1936, even though he witnessed magical events in Temple of Doom, which takes place 1935. The latter was not a prequel; we were witnessing the adventures in the order in which they transpired in Indy's time stream. Each actor who has played Indy is a different incarnation.

Doctor Harold Oxley is The Doctor.

Specifically the War Doctor. They look alike!

George Hall's portrayal of Indiana Jones was wiped out by the Time War.

That is why the footage of him does not appear on the home video releases of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Ianto Jones is the grandson of Indiana Jones.

And he joins Torchwood.

Indiana Jones is just a dream that Han Solo had while he was frozen in carbonite.

This is why R2-D2 and C-3PO appear in the hieroglyphs in the Well of Souls.

• It can also go a long way to explain Indy's relationship and reconciliation with his father, after all Han is a loner and an orphan who secretly yearns for family.
• This isn't entirely far-fetched. Notice that the club he visits at the beginning of Temple Of Doom is named "Club Obi-Wan"?

If Young Indiana Jones Chronicles had a season 3, there'd be an episode where Indy visits China and meets the future parents of Short Round.

Indiana Jones as Tool of Fate

It's often pointed out that the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark could have played out exactly the same without Indy even in it: the Nazis find they can't weaponize the Ark and it's locked away and forgotten. Nothing Indy does over the course of the movie changes that. But there is one thing his presence insures: Marion Ravenwood lives. If Indy hadn't been at her place at the same time Toht was, Marion would surely have been tortured and killed. Marion being dead also means that Mutt is never conceived, which in turn means that Oxley never gets rescued from the Russians. Either Mutt or Oxley have some predetermined purpose that Indy's presence ensured.

Short Round fought in World War II

Shorty was 11 years old in 1935. This would make him about 17 or 18 when America entered the war.

Despite without Paramount's involvement, there will still be reference to the Paramount logo joke at the beginning of Indiana Jones 5

Paramount will still be involved, albeit more as a legacy credit (ala The Avengers and Iron Man 3).

Alternatively they will turn the Disney logo into a mountain

Jossed, Lucasfilm uses it's own branding separate from Disney's

In The Last Crusade, Schneider intentionally gave Donovan the wrong cup

Vogel was already dead, there weren't many soldiers left, and her thoughts on Donovan and feelings for Indy were clear. When Donovan goes to fill the grail, Indiana and Schneider share a look. Schneider also appears unphased by Donovan's initial reaction, onlygetting frightened when Donovan starts aging rapidly. She intentionally killed Donovan, but didn't expect the Rapid Aging, propably thinking that he was going to just drop dead.

The fictional universe has a D&D approach to religion

How can Hindu gods, YHWH/Jesus and aliens all exist in one universe? Because in this universe all religions are equally true based on the believer.

Indy survives because he can hear the music cues from John Williams

• In the liner notes to the first soundtrack Steven Spielberg jokes that Indy knew exactly when to duck because Williams was right there giving him the right music cues.

An elderly Indy vacationed in Hawaii in 1977 and met two nerdy filmmakers

• Sammy Fabelman and one of his buddies are building a sandcastle and discussing possible future movies. A grizzled old figure comes up to them and says “let me tell you a story or two…”

Unlike Star Wars and other “sagas,” continuity is ignored between episodes - possibly on purpose

• In the ultimate tribute to the movie serials that inspired it, the individual movies are more “episodes” than “chapters” in a larger work. Other than the basics of the characters, each movie is meant as a self contained story that may or may not contradict the other movies. This is part of a larger WMG that George Lucas has a postmodern streak which belies his po-faced, literal reputation.

God is looking out for Indy.

The infamous surviving-a-nuclear-test-by-hiding-in-a-fridge was a genuine miracle. So was the scene in Dial's prologue where Indy is getting hanged, at which point a bomb conveniently lands in the room and explodes, killing the Nazis in the room but Indy is somehow not blown to bits.

Following up on the All Myths Are True guess from the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull WMG, the chalice that Walter Donovan drank was a necromancy artifact, a Soul Jar perhaps.

So, if a knowledgeable person recovered the golden goblet, Walter Donovan may be released, but may find himself in a new form like as a lich and Indy might be facing an unusual Breakout Villain. To make things more interesting, Walter might be Blessed with Suck to make his new form a malady of sorts too.

The grail knight is a ghost

Despite the grail room's golden lighting that falls on all the other characters, he's lit weirdly blue. He also never really does anything — maybe he can't.

The grail somehow supernaturally lures people

When Elsa reaches for it on the ledge, shown from Indy's perspective, it looks normal. After Elsa falls to her death and it's Indy who's hanging by one arm, his POV shot of the grail is sort of hazy and glowing. Maybe it actually does something to people's minds, like the Ark in the Raiders novelization seems to?

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