- The only reason they found the tape recorder was because an armed team was scouring the tunnels looking for the cart he was using.
- It certainly explains the predilection for the supernatural in both of them.
- Alternatively- and I'm not sure how well the timeline matches up, so bear that in mind- Kolchak's confiscated tapes became the basis for (at least one batch of) the X-Files.
Kolchak was a hunter. He worked as a reporter but to gain information he often used the same methods the Winchesters and other hunters use by pretending to be other people. Doctors, Health Inspectors and so on. Carl was more than a reporter. He was a hunter trying to expose the truth to the world but he always came up short on the evidence in the end.
- It explains why he never goes out without it, and how he always wins despite being an ordinary human in a world full of demons, aliens, werewolves, etc. who actively goes looking for trouble, is typically unarmed, and has no combat training.
Despite being given the barest of clues and never exhibiting great detection skills,Karl Kolchak manages to locate and defeat monsters in a crowded urban area with little or no assistance. These monsters included an alien, a humanoid, and TWO separate vampires. How could this be possible?
Either Kolchak SENSED the presence of these creatures, or he was a creature himself and had an affinity.
- Alternately, the very first monster he ran into put a curse on him so that he'd keep running into other monsters. Or possibly it put the curse on his suit, since he's always wearing that same outfit when he runs into monsters.
Who else would cause the police so much trouble that they're forced to create a special division in the department to explain everything away, and so understaffed that it could do little.
The final episode of Rockford had Jim meet a reporter with the Independent New Service, the same news service Carl works for. One of the writers of the episode was Rudolph Borchert who wrote several episodes of Kolchak. The shows shared more than one creative personnel. David Chase (later of The Sopranos) also worked on both shows. Simon Oakland (who played Kolchak's boss) appeared in a few roles on Rockford.
- NOTE: I've only seen the first season, and this is just based on that, so I'm open to the possibility that what are omnipresent features of every episode I've seen so far might stop happening with such regularity in later stories, which would go against my theory. Then again, that might just be a sign that his delusion has gotten more severe.
- Actually? According to Sam Inabinet, the original Kolchak WAS a big inspiration for the original World of Darkness. They started by wondering what it would be like for the monsters to have to put up with this annoying reporter always butting into their affairs, and it snowballed from there.
- I thought this was pretty well implied in the show itself?