Wild Mass Guessing for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Never forgetting his "connection" with the stars, Elliot eventually became an astronaut. His great-grandson will eventually be the first man on Mars, and his family will carry on a proud spacefaring tradition.
Thousands of years later, with humanity dispersed to other planets in the galaxy, a distant descendant of his will briefly consider joining the space fleet of the central galactic military, until a certain moisture farmer from an obscure desert planet will convince him to take up the rebels' cause...
- That doesn't work, because Star Wars took place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Elliot would have to be the descendent of Luke Skywalker - not the other way around.
PS: Elliot's Disappeared Dad was a somewhat libertine archaeologist who loved treasure-hunting a bit more than a quiet suburban life.
Okay, now we just need the mandatory guesses about Haruhi Suzumiya, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Time Lords.
- People keep getting the impression that Star Wars takes place in the future. The "Long time ago in a galaxy far far away" most likely means that it's set millions of years before our planet was created and civilized. Many galaxies could have humans and humanoid lifeforms with technology that may seem advanced but are older than ours.
- The thing about humans in Star Wars is a bit debatable. Lucas and co. have always been deliberately vague about the origin of humans in the Star Wars universe, but it's been established that, while humans are the dominant species on many worlds in the galaxy (Alderaan, Corellia and Coruscant, to name a few), they aren't indigenous to any of those planets—they're colonists who arrived from some unknown planet thousands of years in the past. Theories abound, but it's natural to assume that said planet was Earth.
- And there was a planned (but unreleased) novel called Star Wars: Alien Exodus that would have established that humans wound up in the galaxy after fleeing Earth and traveling through a time warp. Some fans still consider this explanation Canon. If this is true, it would mean that the humans are from Earth's future, even if the events of the series take place in the past. The meeting with E.T. could have inspired humans to make the trip into space that would end with them going through the time warp.
- This is actually somewhat Canon. In The Phantom Menace, George Lucas purposely included a shot of a group of aliens in the Galactic Senate that look like E.T. as a Shout-Out to Spielberg. It's since been established that they come from a planet called "Brodo Asogi" (one of the names given to E.T.'s home planet in the spin-off novel E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet), and that their ambassador to the Senate is named "Grebleips". An entry on the Star Wars website "HoloNet News" also mentions that Grebleips was involved in funding an exploratory expedition outside the Star Wars Galaxy, but the results of it are unknown...
- And when E.T. sees a kid in a Yoda costume, he makes a beeline for him, saying "Home! Home! Home!" He thinks it actually IS the esteemed Jedi Master! (Or at least a member of his species.)
- People keep getting the impression that Star Wars takes place in the future. The "Long time ago in a galaxy far far away" most likely means that it's set millions of years before our planet was created and civilized. Many galaxies could have humans and humanoid lifeforms with technology that may seem advanced but are older than ours.
- Not only is E.T. from the Star Wars galaxy, he's a Jedi. He used The Force to make the bicycle fly.
- Yeah, but let's not forget Elliot shows E.T his collection of Star Wars toys.
- The Force somewhat screwed up and waves of pictures of the past somehow wound up in earthling George Lucas's dreams one night. He made a movie out of it. (Not the real George Lucas: his counterpart in the E.T. universe that made the movie the toys are based on.)
Instead of a certain archeologist suggested in the WMG above, Elliot's father is actually Mutt Williams aka Henry Jones III.
- This is actually much more likely. If he's 10 years old, Elliot would have been born around 1972, at which point Indy would be 73 years old (he was canonically born in 1899) and pushing 80 when Gertie came around. Even for Indiana Jones that's a bit hard to believe. Mutt, assuming he was conceived during or shortly after the events of Raiders, would likely have been born in early 1937, which would make him a much more reasonable 35 for Elliot's birth.
Or instead of being related to Indy,he was actually recruited to be an agent with a government agency dedicated to protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe. "Going to Mexico with Sally" was actually the cover for how Elliot's dad's previous identity was erased.
- Or maybe Eliot remained alien-obsessed as he grew up, got involved in science fiction, and wound up working for ILM as a creature-designer. When the chance to work on the prequels to his favorite childhood film-series came along, he made sure that his long-lost friend E.T. wasn't left out.
- In alternative: within the universe of the movie, Star Wars really was based by an alien chronicle called Journal of the Whills, which showed pictures of many nonhuman alien species. When pictures of E.T. made the news, George Lucas was not surprised.
- Well, that certainly would explain his color...
I mean, you’d think that after accidentally abandoning one of his crew on an alien world, the first thing any decent space captain would do is turn around and start using all his ship’s space-sensors to find his guy so they can rescue him.
Even if the space sensors couldn’t find the sad little turd-person, they should have picked up his phone home signal in, like, three minutes, and been there within the hour. Instead Elliott and ET waited all night, then had to spend, like, two more days being probed by the government and dying in ditches before getting the flying bicycle back to Spaceville.
The conclusion of all this is obvious: ET wasn’t forgotten by his crewmates, he was marooned. They dumped him deliberately and then — as evidenced by the length of time it took them to get back — they flew off in a direction that was Away.
So why did they come back at all? Well, clearly a ship that advanced would have a computerised log. And they couldn’t very well get back to their home planet and tell their glowy-fingered alien masters: “Yeah, we got a distress signal, but we decided to ignore it because screw that guy.”
What they could tell their glowy-fingered alien masters, of course, is: “Yeah, we rescued him, but he turned out to be infected with weird Earth diseases, so we were forced to savagely beat him with our space-clubs, and then throw him out the airlock. It was really sad; we were forced to hold an awesome party to make ourselves feel better.”
And now you know why there was never a sequel.
- Robot Chicken seems to support this theory
Even if the crew basically decided to say "sod that guy", there would still be questions about just how they managed to sustain casualties on a scouting mission, and judging by how they did it privately they wouldn't want to leave behind a body, meaning simply saying "a native animal mauled him" and any attack by a human would surely lead to war.
Therefore, I propose that E.T. was the captain of a ship that decided to mutiny against him, leaving him behind on a backwater planet where he wouldn't be able to arrange rescue, giving the renegade ship time to escape. E.T. getting rescued means that things just got a lot worse for that crew now he's been rescued, and judging by the level of competence E.T. shows, they may not have been wholly unjustified in mutinying.
Alternatively...
- This is supported by the scientists' background dialogue — they say that E.T.'s DNA is encoded with six bases instead of the four that terrestrial life has.
- So he basically had alien scurvy? That could explain his very rapid recovery. It's possible for a human to die of scurvy if we don't get any Vitamin C, but even a small amount will cure it fairly rapidly.