Indiana Jones/WMG

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."

• 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 Lucas Film-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. Sorry, You Fail Logic Forever.

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.

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.
  • That really doesn't make sense because the Temple of Doom may not have been as good as the other original films, but it is leaps and bounds above Crystal Skull.
• 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."
• 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 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.

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 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 Richard Dreyfuss 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?

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 ww 2 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 mediteranian instead of d-day, which leads to no cold war and democracy in most nations of the world because stalin will be in no postition to demand the eastern european naitons, or support communist china, or creating north korea, leading to the U.S. not feeling the need to install dictators in power, leding to slow develpoment of democracies instead of rushing to put in something that can fight a war. that, or they get nukes and the world is devistated by nuclear war.

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.â€\x9D

• 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.
• 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."

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.

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.

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

Because that also would be too cool.

Elsa Schneider was a virgin.

Indy didn't 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 MI 6 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 Maharaja 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 quite less serious and competent, and shows clear signs of starting to lose touch with the world.
  • He got lost in his own museum.
• 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 dingity as he deteriorated while lower-level college officials did all the actual work. By 1944 Brody may have either died or have been too far gone to continue to function in this role.
• 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 Area51.

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.

Twilight Sparkle and Timon from "The Lion King" 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.

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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.