Indiana Jones/Headscratchers

• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom
• Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
• Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull

• Okay, so where is Indy's college exactly? Last Crusade and Crystal Skull both show his plane leaving from New York, but Raiders shows him leaving from San Francisco. Surely he didn't travel across the whole country just to get a flight.
  • He got a new job in between Raiders and Last Crusade?
  • No, that can't be. Last Crusade clearly shows him teaching in the same classroom he used in Raiders. Plus, Brody was still there and Crystal Skull copies an establishing shot from Raiders (except with '50s cars instead of '30s cars).
    • In "Raiders" he was going to Tibet. He'd likely have taken a train or plane cross-country to reach San Francisco. Back in the '30s the only way to cross the Pacific fast was on Pan American Airlines' flying boats (service had just started a year or two before the movie). It's more likely that the classic "Indy travelling the globe via red line" montage skipped a step of land travel, I think. Whereas to cross the Atlantic he would leave from a major port like New York- and by the '50s, international airline service was good enough he could easily catch a flight out of New York. The thing to remember is that in this era there wasn't an international airport for every city of respectable size. People trying to fly out of the country had a relatively short list of options.
  • He DID get a new job between Raiders and Last Crusade -- sort of. In Raiders (and presumably Temple of Doom) he taught at Marshall College in Bedford, Connecticut (filmed at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut). In Last Crusade, he taught an archaeology class at Barnett College in New York City, but remained a tenured professor at Marshall, where he was seen working in Crystal Skull. So it was the same classroom in Raiders and Last Crusade; he was teaching at the same college. Bedford, like its real-life counterpart, is close to New York City, which had the nearest international airport.
    • In the video game, when he travels to Venice, we first see him riding from San Francisco to New York...
      • No it doesn't...also, in his office, he refers to something sent to him by "some people from San Francisco."
• INFURIATING: This troper, with more than a little guilt/misplaced sympathy, finds herself feeling really sorry for the Redshirt Germans and Russkies. They were likely conscripts, and don't deserve horrible burning/crushing deaths. Furthermore, the general labeling of all the Germans as Nazis drives her up the wall.
  • "Dammit, I don't even like Hitler."
    • It's during WWII. Did you really expect this general who's been fighting the Nazi to be all calm and understanding to every German?
  • It could be argued that only the most loyal and/or fanatical supporters of the Nazi/Communist regime would've been chosen to undertake such a prestigious and important mission.
    • This is true. In the case of the Nazis, at least, it seems more likely most troops used would be from the Waffen-SS than the Wehrmacht, which Hitler never fully trusted (and as demonstrated later for good reason.)
      • Hitler didn't trust the Waffen-SS? Didn't they start off as his own private bodyguard? I may be wrong, but wasn't their first divison named Adolf Hitler?
      • I think that troper means Hitler didnt fully trust the Wehrmacht, not the Waffen. Also, I know it's a German word, but Waffen sounds quite silly to me.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?? By the standards of the 1930s and 1940s serials that Indiana Jones is based on, not much.
• This may be potential blasphemy, but here goes. Why does he use a whip? OK Rule of Cool, and the plot contrives it so having a whip frequently comes in handy, but is their ever any concrete reason given why Indy favours a whip as a weapon? I know the intro to Last Crusade gives a pseudo origin story for the whip, but even then, how does "once used a handy whip to fend of a lion" translate into a whip becoming his Iconic Item?
  • The whip was George Lucas' idea, inspired by Zorro. In-universe, it's a pretty versatile piece of equipment. It can be a rope, a harrying weapon, and there is at least one report of a bullwhip being used as a hunting weapon.
  • Also it scares the shit out of people, which is always good when you constantly rely on the Indy Ploy.
  • Didn't the guy that apparently inspired Indy's choice of hat in the entire introductory segment of Last Crusade have a whip also? I may be misremembering, but I distinctly recall one being on his hip.
  • No, he didn't.