Screenwriters tend to have a certain pool of references they call upon when they need a parody of certain genres of movies: science-fiction (May the Farce Be with You and Where No Parody Has Gone Before for Star Wars and Star Trek), fantasy (The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter), and mystery and spy adventure (particularly James Bond).
One such parody sprang up among screenwriters when movie titans Steven Spielberg and George Lucas teamed up to create the Indiana Jones franchise. Specifically the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the most easily recognizable and famous of the franchise and the trope namer, has since become a stock parody due to its ubiquity amongst pop culture. The common elements that a majority of these parodies contain include:
- Extremely deadly and often insanely-designed booby traps that seem impossible to overcome.
- A giant rolling ball of doom, straight from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which may or may not end with an Indy Hat Roll scene.
- A face-melting scene.
- An idol-swap scene.
- A Hot-Blooded Adventure Archaeologist with a cynical and snarky take on the universe, an Omniglot who is deadly in hand-to-hand as well as firearm combat. Typically wears a fedora and carries a bullwhip around with him and daylights as a college professor. May be named after an American state.
- Said Adventure Archaeologist also has a tendency, in these parodies, to use his whip for almost every situation. Especially true in G-rated works where the use of firearms is restricted.
- A MacGuffin that can range from something as mundane as a pencil to as important as a religious artifact with supernatural powers (e.g. The Ark of the Covenant), something that proves unwise to tamper with.
- A love interest or female companion that, most of the time, is shrill, irritable, and annoying.
- Human foes that include natives or Nazis.
- Extreme, over-the-top violence (in the darker parodies).
- A score similar to John Williams's iconic Raiders March.
- A plot, if said parody goes beyond the iconic scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, that tends to get pretty crazy and ridiculously over-the-top.
- A "map with constantly moving red line superimposed on stock footage of various modes of transportation and famous landmarks" sequence to indicate where the characters are going next.
A subtrope of Stock Parodies. Can lead to Parody Displacement due to the easily recognizable traits shared with both the film and the numerous parodies.
Examples:
- Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas has Nobita begging for Doraemon to let him "experience an adventure" from the comfort of his house, so Doraemon takes out one of his gadgets, the "Indira Johnson Home Adventure Playset" simulator (based on the long-running "Indira Johnson" movies) which changes the entire Nobi household into an adventure world.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): In the 5th Laboratory episode, there is a Giant Rolling Ball of Doom sequence a la Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Pokémon: The Series has a couple examples. Battling the Enemy Within has the aforementioned "boulder rolling down a hall" parody. "Explorers of the Hero's Ruin" in Pokémon the Series: Black & White goes much further by including the "boulder rolling down a hall" bit and Cedric Juniper keeping a log of the ruin that is similar to the Grail Diary in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Cedric already had the appearance of Henry Jones Sr. in the games, the anime also gives him his characterization. There are also traps styled after those found in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and the behavior of the Sigilyph found in the ruin is akin to the science fiction elements of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And last but not least, Gary wore Indy's Iconic Outfit while hunting for fossils in Grandpa Canyon.
- The "Hollywood World" episode of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi has, among dozens of film references of every kind, Sasshi as Indy in a parody of the scene where Indy shoots the man with a scimitar... that turns into another Stock Parody, The Matrix's Bullet Time sequence.
- Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! encounter a Funny Animal version of Indy called Oklahoma Bones.
- The K-9 and Company Annual 1983 revealed that Sarah-Jane Smith had an Adventure Archaeologist uncle named Africana, whose inadvertent theft of a scared icon led to cultists pursuing Sarah and her friends.
Aunt Lavinia: Africana Smith lived for adventure. All his life he was involved in exploring lost tombs and cities, locating legendary tribes, unearthing priceless archaeological treasures.
- Star Wars:
- Star Wars: Darth Vader. Our introduction to Dr Aphra, an Adventure Archaeologist who is an Evil Counterpart to Han Solo plus Harrison Ford's other famous role. Aphra sneaks into an abandoned space station, snags the Triple-Zero personality matrix, accidentally triggers a motion-sensor and dodges the subsequent Laser Hallway, runs from a Destroyer Droid using its ball-shaped forcefield to roll down a ramp after her and dives through the requisite Slow Doors. She's then captured by a rival archaeologist who takes back the personality matrix, which Aphra angrily declares should not be locked up in a museum, it should be in an armory!
- The introduction to the Star Wars: Doctor Aphra spin-off begins with a masked Adventure Archaeologist acquiring an ancient artefact, only to activate an ancient defence mechanism, then successfully escape only for it to be stolen by a rival a.l.a. Belloq. The twist is that Aphra is the rival and she shoots him In the Back as an Establishing Character Moment.
- The Rugrats Movie has an entire Fake-Out Opening recreating the first scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark straight down to the original score (in the show's typical Imagine Spot style, the "idol" is actually an ice-cream sundae). Hell, Tommy dons the moniker and outfit of Indy, or "Okeydokey Jones", later on in the movie. This scene is played again at the very end, where all the babies have finally accepted Dil into the family - and wouldn't ya know it, he's the reason they succeed in getting the "idol" this time.
- Tad, the Lost Explorer has many Indiana Jones homages across its three movies, down to the character being "Tadeo Jones" in the original Spanish (the English dub renames him Tad Stones) and dressing like Indy.
- Toy Story did a shout-out to the boulder scene with Buzz being chased by a rolling ball that got knocked loose, not long before he fell out the window.
- Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter is a 1981 9-minute 16mm short film made by Scott Spiegel and Josh Becker with the help of their college buddies Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.
- Disaster Movie contains a parody of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - that like most films made by Seltzer and Friedberg, was based solely on the trailer.
- Doom Raiders is a rare feature-length Indy parody that has Dr. Bradley Stone on a quest to stop the evil tyrant king Sevenseas from reuniting his soul with his body, fighting Nazis and trading quips with Eve Mammare, a Lara Croft parody, along the way.
- Indiana Jed And The Search For The Infinite Power is a 1992 feature-length film made by high school students featuring the titular Jed and his friend Marc Evans as they try to stop the evil Belloch from finding the Infinite Power, which will make him a One-Man Army.
- The opening scene of UHF. Weird Al in adventurer attire grabs the Oscar, sets off a booby trap, and runs away from a boulder that follows his every turn, past several famous world landmarks.
- From Svengoolie: A very short scene from "Indiana Bones and the Last Beer Frame" starring Tombstone; he runs away from a giant bowling ball.
- One Imagine Spot by J.D. in Scrubs shows Turk climbing into a patient's intestines and removing a tumor in a parody of the idol-swap scene.
JD: Watch out for colon darts.
- There's another episode where Carla has a lot on her mind and JD encourages her to confide her problems in him. He gets more than he bargained for when she begins unloading all of her problems on him at once, in rapid succession. This leads to an imagine spot where she opens up her head, which reveals a blinding light that melts JD's face.
- Discovery Channel mini series Unchained Reaction had one of the machines start off with an imitation of the idol swap scene.
- Several episodes of Hannah Montana briefly feature Miley Stewart acting in an action movie series as the lead character, "Indiana Joanie".
- An episode of Magnum, P.I. features a guest star who is an author working on a very Raiders-like adventure novel, using Magnum and friends as her inspiration. Doubles as Actor Allusion, since Tom Selleck was considered for the role of Indiana Jones but had to turn it down because he was already under contract for Magnum.
- This actually happens twice. In "Legend of the Lost Art", a notorious villain is a huge fan of the old movies that Raiders was derived from, and plans all his crimes using elements of said films. Magnum, again cast as the Indiana type character, plans his countermoves by drawing on his own memories of said films.
- When MythBusters looked at some of the scenes from Raiders, the opening sequence was one of these (with Adam in his personal Indiana Jones costume), complete with huge boulder rolling through M5 and an Indy Hat Roll through the garage door.
- Bill Nye the Science Guy had an archaeology-focused episode, so naturally its opening skit had to have Bill Nye parodying Raiders: the moment he touches the cobweb on the statue, the entire temple begins to collapse, and he gets crushed by an obviously Chroma Keyed boulder right before the Title Sequence.
- Xena: Warrior Princess: in 'The Xena Scrolls' we meet Gabrielle's descendant, Janice Covington, a whip wielding, cigar chomping, pistol packing leather jacketed archaeologist.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog in Castle Robotnik Sonic and Tails are chased by a boulder and while Tails makes it across the pit at the end of the corridor (although he apparently forgot he could fly as Sonic had to hold the rope taut so he could get across) Sonic ends up dangling down the pit and meeting up with a snake that insists on calling him Dr. Jones.
- National Lampoon: There was a parody that had the hero being a gynecologist instead of an archeologist.
- The music video for "Tune into the Madness" by Dan Bull and The Stupendium has a short scene of Dan parodying the famous idol-swap scene, with a model of The Stupendium's head on top of the pedestal.
- From Sesame Street:
- One animated interstitial that premiered in 1985 uses the exploits of an explorer and his sweetheart (starting with an Indy Escape) to explain the word/concept "adventure". The music is suspiciously similar to John Williams' underscore, and the word appears in a font inspired by the movie logo at the end!
- "The Golden Cabbage of Snufertiti" (1990) features Bob's brother Minneapolis Johnson, played by Jeff Goldblum, who has traced the titular treasure to Sesame Street — specificially Mr. Snuffleupagus's cave. Includes a spoof of the Indy Escape in which they and Big Bird flee what appears to be a giant boulder but is actually the cabbage, which is...the size of an actual cabbage. (Not coincidentally, the aforementioned "Adventure" cartoon is the first interstitial.)
- "The Golden Triangle of Destiny": After 'Minnesota Mel' shows up and tells Telly and Chris about said triangle, Mel gets a 'charley horse', so Telly gets his own costume, calls himself 'Texas Telly' and takes his place. The episode also featured 'Wyoming Walt' and 'Virginia Virginia'.
- As a game popular in The '80s featuring dungeon-crawling, ancient ruins, booby traps, and magical artifacts, Dungeons & Dragons has featured many Indiana Jones homages, nods, and just plain knock-offs over the decades.
- Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition has a background called “Archaeologist” for building PCs based on Indy. You can start with a whip, hat, or medallion among your gear, having a fear of “a common wild animal” is a possible flaw, and “That artifact belongs in a museum!” is an option for a bond.
- The protagonist of Paganitzu is actually called Alabama Smith.
- In Fallout: New Vegas, with Wild Wasteland enabled, you can find a skeleton with a brown fedora in a refrigerator just outside Goodsprings, in a Take That! to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
- The LEGO Indiana Jones series, natch.
- In World of Warcraft, about half of Uldum (an ancient Egypt-style zone) consists of helping "Harrison Jones" find a magic relic in an ancient temple and fight nazi goblins.
- Earnest Evans is pretty much this, all the way to the "rolling boulder scene" in the closing credits that squashes Earnest in the end. The titular hero is a whip-wielding archaeologist, chasing after a macguffin that would summon the dark god Hastur and end the world. The first level is very much like the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, rolling boulder and all (though a bug allows you to get behind the boulder) and subsequent levels have Earnest travel the world shown with a red line along a map. About the only element absent is the Nazis, replaced by both the cult of Hastur, and the Mafia.
- Several of the early Crash Bandicoot games, particularly the rolling boulders and natives of the original.
- Baldur's Gate II has a tile puzzle in the ruined temple that is very similar to the one seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This includes the solution, which is to step on the tiles that spell out the name of the god the temple was once dedicated to.
- Unsurprisingly, the Tomb Raider games are full of these, with Lara Croft basically being a female Indiana Jones.
- The cinematic trailer for Season 5 of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has a scene of multiple Fall Guys inside a temple, trying to get a crown off a pedestal. One of them steals another player's crown, which is part of their mummy set they're wearing, and switches it with the crown on the pedestal. It works, but the mummy Fall Guy steals their costume crown afterward and triggers the trap.
- The Cliffhangers theme from Irregular Webcomic! is one big Affectionate Parody of Indiana Jones.
- The Order of the Stick has the Order escaping an explosion by hiding in a coffin. Lampshaded by the demon roaches, who exit from a fridge, one of them wearing an Indy hat and a whip.
- OpenBSD 3.8 was released with a fake radio show based on Indiana Jones called Hackers Of The Lost RAID featuring Puffiana Jones.
- The Danger Mouse episode "The Great Bone Idol" is a detailed Whole-Plot Reference / Affectionate Parody of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with DM as Indy, Count Duckula as Belloq, Baron Greenback as the Nazis, and the titular idol (kept in a very Ark-like reliquary) as the Ark... plus a pit full of elephants instead of snakes!
- DuckTales brings it full circle in the season two premiere "The Most Dangerous Game... Night!" Scrooge and the kids dodge traps (including a huge, rolling stone wheel that chases them down a hall) while retrieving a golden idol from "The Lost City of Cibola". This is actually a Mythology Gag referencing "The Seven Cities of Cibola" by Carl Barks, which has been cited by George Lucas as an inspiration for the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Family Guy usually throws in an Indiana Jones parody (or two), but season four's "The Courtship of Stewie's Father" takes the cake by dedicating the entire final act towards the final minutes of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
- Garfield's Feline Fantasies had a scene almost exactly like the famous tile puzzle scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- In the Bad Dog episode "Bad Dog To The Bone", the Potanskis discover they live above a temple for moles. A paleontologist comes to their house to help with the dig, and he and Berkeley end up inside said mole temple.
- The Simpsons: The episode "Bart's Friend Falls in Love" dedicated the first few minutes of its opening act to the famous introduction of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Bart steals Homer's change jar from his dresser, Homer wakes up and gives chase, but trips and rolls down the stairs after him. Bart executes a flawless Indy Hat Roll under the closing garage door, and Homer does his best Chased by Angry Natives impression, yelling in Angrish as the school bus drives away.
- There's a VHS release called "Raiders of the Lost Fridge" (a collection of food-related episodes), the cover of which shows Homer in Indiana Jones getup fleeing from a giant rolling donut.
- Tiny Toon Adventures had a Raiders parody with Buster as "Pasadena Jones" and Montana Max as his rival (a combination of Belloq and Toht).
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The episode "Read It and Weep" dedicates part of the episode to recounting a book Rainbow Dash is reading, Daring Do and the Sapphire Statue. Said book is essentially Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with ponies.
- "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone" closely follows the story of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, including a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Turkey.
- "Indiana Pac and the Temple of Slime" of Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures parodies many tropes commonly found in Indiana Jones.
- From VeggieTales: the episode "Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson's Hairbrush"; Larry the Cucumber in a story about bullying.
- One episode of Regular Show ends with Mordecai forced to choose the correct hat out of a collection of other hats in an obvious homage to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, down to an aged knight watching over the proceedings and the fact that he'll be skeletonized if he chooses poorly.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: The episode "The Firebending Masters" takes place in an ancient temple, complete with booby traps.
- An early episode of Animaniacs wound up with Yakko directing Mr. Director through a few movie parodies. In one, Mr. Director was "Illinois Smith" and utterly failed with the whip — first he ends up tying himself up with the thing, then when he gets free he cracks it and it gets caught on the set rafters, bringing them down on him. "I think it's a not-working whip."
- Several episodes of Codename: Kids Next Door, inevitably starring Numbuh Five, were designed as Whole Plot References of the Indiana Jones films. These famously introduced her Arch-Enemy Heinrich von Marzipan (though the first one features the Delightful Children Down the Lane as the villains); when the showrunners ran out of Indy movies to parody, they switched to Pirates of the Caribbean instead.
- Danger Mouse includes the episode "The Great Bone Idol", a detailed parody of Raiders.
- Phineas and Ferb:
- The idol-swap scene was parodied in "We Call It Maze", as one of the puzzles in Phineas and Ferb's maze.
- "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon" features the boys as adventurers Ohio Flynn and Rhode Island Fletcher.
- Muppet Babies has a recurring Imagine Spot with Baby Kermit as Indiana Frog, most notably the episode "Raiders of the Lost Muppet". Kermit is also in his Indiana Frog guise when he sings "I like adventure" in the opening credits.
- The final third of the South Park episode "Free Hat" closely follows the final sequences of Raiders of the Lost Ark, from Tweek threatening to blow the digitally altered version of Raiders of the Lost Ark back to God to the new version being so terrible it melts the faces of everyone who watches it. The original reels are hidden in a warehouse to keep anyone else from messing with theme.
- On Rocko's Modern Life, a globe falls off a building, and Rocko (who had been pretending to roller skate to impress a girl) diverts it by doing the one thing he is good at: jackhammering.
- In another episode, Filburt is selected to appear on a Game Show, but gets a bad fortune cookie and starts to attract all sorts of bad luck. Rocko and Heffer get the idea to cover him in various Lucky Charms, and Filburt appears on the show as planned. He spins the wheel, and the wheel comes unscrewed and starts rolling through O-Town (and eventually all over the world.)
- Also parodied when Ed is being chased by Earl.
- The Fairly Oddparents episode "Parent Hoods" goes the whole sacred-idol routine with... a pencil sharpener. In a museum gift shop. It's protected by a thematically-appropriate riddle, and dispenses a rolling pencil the size of a sequoia once the sharpener gets swiped.
- Transformers: BotBots episode "The Lost Bots And The Claw Crusade" sees Burgertron and Dimlit searching for the mythical Costa Pasta Collector's Cup, which grants the bearer the amazing power of free soda refills in the month of February 1997.
- Filmation's Ghostbusters took Raiders as a general style influence, which led to Jake and Eddie being uniformed as a jungle explorer and an old-fashioned pilot. Throughout the series, exploring ancient temples and far-flung destinations was par for the course.
- Beetlejuice becomes Grimdiana Bones as he goes out to rescue Lydia from the giant Neitherworld ape Thing Thong in the episode "Beauty and the Beetle." Everytime he says "Grimdiana Bones," he gets run over by a giant boulder.
- The Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon featured a movie parody segment titled "Idaho Spud and the Temple of Trash", the titular character being a not-too-bright explorer with a potato for a head.
- Molly of Denali: In "Puppy Palooza," Molly and Trini are in the middle of acting out their own Indiana Jones type game when Tooey interrupts them to remind them they've got a path through the mud to help him build. Even the music in the scene sounds like a parody of the Indiana Jones soundtrack.
Trini: Quick, Molly! Throw me the Jewel of Tang-goose-koo!(Molly throws her the "jewel," which is a rock)Trini: You’ll have to jump! You’re in quicksand!Molly: It’s too far! Quick, throw me the whip.