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Fridge Brilliance
- Early on in the film, after the flash-back to the 1940s, Indiana Jones is lecturing to a class of rather disinterested students who are more focused on the 1969 moon landing footage rather than learning about what is rather ancient history. One can't help but feel that this is nothing short of brilliant meta-context regarding Harrison Ford's acting career itself given that Harrison Ford has been more well known as Han Solo rather than Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford has constantly stated his preference for Indiana Jones over Han Solo, and while grateful for the role of Han Solo, he has been known to be irritated when everyone focuses on Han Solo over his other roles. One can't help but make the comparisons between the students obsessing about the moon landing over Indiana's lecture on Archimedes and ancient Greece with Ford's acting career.
- Not to mention that Indiana himself has made first contact with aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The entire spectacle of celebrating humans reaching the moon is nothing compared to first hand knowledge of life beyond Earth.
- Why did the Romans and Greeks believe the other side had dragons? Because of perception and understanding mixed with history trying to conserve itself, hardly anyone is going to believe Archimedes invented a way to time travel plus with how the Nazis and protagonists entered the Classical Era, The Powers That Be would like things to be stable even if there are no Gods governing the concepts we understand now.
- On another level, it would make sense that their first assumption would be a dragon, since in ancient Rome and Greece, dragons are just "huge snakes" and what did they see when the airplane came in? A giant snake with wings which also happened to kill people just by "breathing/roaring" at them (actually Klaber being trigger-happy inside the plane), the only thing different from the usual image they had of dragons, being the wings added onto it.
- In Raiders of the Lost Ark, René Belloq says to Indy, concerning a watch: “It's worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless”. Later, when the Nazi are about to trap Indy in the Well of Souls he tells Indy: “What a fitting end to your life's pursuits. You're about to become a permanent addition to this archaeological find. Who knows? In a thousand years, even you may be worth something”. At the end of the movie, the latter quote almost comes true when Indy tries to remain in ancient Syracuse, but is thankfully stopped by Helena punching him out. However, what René said about the watch becomes partly true when Voller ends up dying in Syracuse and Archimedes’ body is entombed with his watch.
- And let us not forget the irony about a wristwatch becoming a time displaced artifact.
- What exactly caused Voller to be so disillusioned with Hitler (to the point of plotting an assassination on his Führer in the past) when he still vigorously believes in Nazism to his very last days? Well, back in the prologue, Colonel Weber yelled at Voller for thinking that half of the Antikythera would be a sufficient substitute for the fake Spear of Longinus, asking if he even met Hitler in person. Voller likely thought that Hitler was a cunning and logical leader who would understand the evolving situation, but his experience with Weber, and most probably his postwar reading of what happened, made him realize that Hitler was anything but, hence his comment to the waiter about how the Allies didn't win the war, Hitler lost it. And if Hitler was neither cunning nor logical, then he's ill-fitted to be Führer at any capacity.
- Voller surviving his encounter with Indy in 1944 unscatched despite being sent flying off a train by getting his head hit with a pipe comes off as strange at first, until the nature of the Stable Time Loop is revealed. Voller is one of the most vital cogs involved in it and it would not be unimaginable that he was made borderline invincible by the powers to be in order to complete his role in the time loop without dying first.
- The reason for the Antikythera to still be perfectly operational and completely untouched by the passage of time? The power of the Stable Time Loop protecting it from everything to ensure it will complete the loop no matter what.
- During the failed auction, Helena teases Indy by calling him "Jonesy". Why does Indy show a dislike for that nickname? In the previous film, it's seen that George "Mac" McHale, his friend-turned-Soviet Union spy, always called him that, so Helena calling Indy with that nickname may have reminded Indy of yet another ally of his who disappointed him with his life choices.
- Why did Indy choose to not destroy the Antikythera when Basil asked him to do so? Ignoring that the dial needed to be intact in order for Archimedes' Stable Time Loop to happen, a common plot point in most of Indy's adventures is that, no matter how important his finds are, Indy always loses evidence of them at the end. The Ark of the Covenant? The US government confiscated it. The three Sankara Stones? Accidentally lost two in a crocodile-infested river and returned one to the Mayapore village, its rightful home. The Holy Grail? Couldn't take it outside the Temple of the Sun and it fell into an abysm. And the Crystal Skull of Akator? Indy returned it to the Interdimensional Beings of Akator, who in turn erased all evidence from their visits to the Earth. And let's not mention some of his greatest yet forgotten finds like the sunken city of Atlantis. After so many failures to take evidence of his most important finds home, Indy surely wished to keep one important artifact as his prize.
- Archimedes' faint bewilderment and squinted eyes looks at his visitors could also be explained by them attempting to speak a language that sort of sounds like his own but has different accents and unknown words thrown in. Ancient Greek and Modern Greek overlap, but not in pronunciation and use of neologisms. Sure, neologisms are often attributed to Greeks by definition: νέο - neo ("new") and λόγος - logos, meaning "speech" or "utterance"; doesn't mean they used this linguistic device as early as ancient times and meanings change. Helena telling Archimedes that she is a "big fan" and that Indiana is "an idiot", does not mean anything in Greek as early as that.
- Both Helena and Indy sound like people who have read the language but do not know how to speak it, coming across as Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping, which is hilarious since even historians of modern times should know the Greek language simply as a means of describing history or what artifacts remain from other times in a scientific manner.
- In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy makes a remark about Irina Spalko's mispronunciation of English thereby betraying her origin. Well, here, Indy betrays his lack of knowledge of Greek pronunciation thereby betraying the fact that he may not be as accomplished as an archeologist and historian then he was an adventurer in his golden years.
- Recall also that in the prologue to Last Crusade, Henry Sr. is evidently forcing Indy to learn Ancient Greek. That, combined with his falling out with his father, is likely to have caused him some resentment towards the language.
- Also worth noting that, by the time Indy meets Archimedes, he has been shot and is therefore probably not at his most lucid.
- Indy wearing a Chicago Cubs t-shirt makes sense when you recall that he originally studied archaeology at the University of Chicago, beginning his studies there (according to The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) in 1919, the year of the infamous Black Sox Scandal. He, or anyone else new to Chicago at the time, would likely be disinclined to support the White Sox as a result — therefore, he became a Cubs fan.
Fridge Horror
- What would have happened if Archimedes hadn’t rigged the dial to bring help from the future? Hitler would be assassinated and the future would be in shambles as a more or less sane leader begins to rise in a more stable Nazi Germany.
- Considering how Archimedes' dial needed its own coordinates to set its coordinates in the first place, the horror lessens somewhat. However, the horror returns when considering the off-chance that if someone else at any point had made another dial with a different set of coordinates locked-in on a different time-rift instead, such as the example above.
- As Helena points out, Indy's death would've been horrific if he had remained in ancient Greece. If Indy decided to fix his bullet wound, he would be subjected to a painful death at the hands of Ancient Greek practices. Thank goodness Helena brought him back to the present for him to be adequately treated.
