Yahoo Movies Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: The best Easter eggs and cameos
The fifth Indiana Jones film features many callbacks and references to the archaeologist's previous adventures
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (in UK cinemas and IMAX now) sees Harrison Ford’s intrepid archaeologist returns for a fifth and final movie, hot on the trail of a mythical artefact that may have the power to change history.
It’s an action-packed adventure that takes place in 1969, and features a sequence set in 1944, and it’s not just the film’s plot that has one foot stuck in the past.
The film also features many callbacks and references to the four previous Indy movies. In fact, there are so many, we bet you didn’t catch them all.
Read our review: Dial of Destiny is a blast from the past
Here’s our essential guide to the best Easter eggs and cameos to keep an eye out for in Dial of Destiny.
Warning: Spoilers ahead…
The Paramount 'transition'
The first four Indiana Jones movies began with an ident for Paramount which transitioned into something within the film in its opening shot. For Raiders, the Paramount mountain became a mountain in South America, in Temple of Doom, it was a mountain on a gong in Club Obi Wan, in The Last Crusade it was a rocky outcrop in the Utah desert, and in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it was a pile of sand.
With Disney acquiring Lucasfilm, it wasn’t feasible for another Paramount logo transition to kick off Dial of Destiny, so while you do get a Paramount ident, it’s followed by a Lucasfilm logo which then transitions into a lock on a gate, preserving a sense of continuity across all five movies.
The Indiana Jones font
Another element of the film’s opening sequence that will feel familiar to fans is the appearance of the film’s title in the recognisable Open Capitals Roman font.
This font was also used to announce the title of every other Indiana Jones film, bar Temple of Doom which opted for something a bit more lively.
Also, keep an ear out for the 'Willhelm Scream' during the opening train sequence. The audible Easter egg, beloved by series creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, gets deployed when a Nazi gets blown off the train.
Hidden treasures
The opening scenes of the film see Indy on the trail of the Lance of Longinus, the spear tip of the weapon believed to have pierced the side of a crucified Jesus at Golgotha. Like all good Indiana Jones MacGuffins before it, the Lance – also known as the Spear of Destiny – was inspired by a real historical artefact.
Eagle-eyed viewers will also spot on the Nazi’s treasure train the Imperial Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire, a collection of historic objects – including an orb that looks like Monty Python’s Holy Hand Grenade – that were really stolen by the Nazis from Austria in 1938 and were hidden at Nuremberg Castle.
Fathers and their diaries
In Dial of Destiny, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena Shaw recruits her godfather Indy to help her to track down the Dial of Archimedes — the Antikythera — that she believes may have the power to change history.
It was the lifelong obsession of her archaeologist father Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), who kept notebooks and diaries charting his pursuit of the mythical object, and it was his zeal for finding the object that drove a wedge between him and Indy.
Read more: Harrison Ford pays tribute to Sean Connery
Indy asks Helena why she would want to keep hunting for the very thing that ‘drove her father crazy’, to which she answers ‘wouldn’t you?’, which raises a knowing eyebrow.
It’s an echo of the events of The Last Crusade, in which Indy’s father – Sean Connery’s Henry Jones Sr. – is the one keeping diaries that chart his similarly obsessive pursuit of a mythical object: The Holy Grail.
Blood of Kali
While exploring a cave on the hunt for the other half of the Antikythera, Indy has to take a break from scaling a wall, and Helena questions whether Indy is feeling his age?
He explains that he’s not about his age, but the mileage, saying he once had to drink the ‘Blood of Kali’ and was tortured 'with voodoo', events which happened in 1984’s Temple of Doom when Mola Ram forces him to drink the blood to bring him under his control.
This sequence in Dial of Destiny also sees Indy crossing a rickety rope bridge, which seems to be a direct nod back to that movie too.
Teddy/Short Round
In Dial of Destiny, Indy and Helena are joined on their adventure by Teddy, a streetwise teenager played by French actor Ethann Isidore. In case his place in the movie as its answer to Short Round (Ke Huy Quan, who sadly doesn't make a cameo) wasn’t immediately obvious, Indy asks Helena where he found him and she explains she caught him trying to pickpocket her purse, and they’ve stuck together ever since.
In Temple of Doom, Willy asks Indy where he found his ‘little bodyguard’, and he explains that he ‘caught him trying to pick my pocket’.
Pan Am planes
Indy’s airline of choice makes another appearance in Dial of Destiny, after the adventurer previously used the operator in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
And, as always, his progress across the globe is charted by a red line being drawn across a map.
Sallah
John Rhys-Davies returns as Indy’s long time friend Sallah for the third time after appearing in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. We learn that Indy helped move Sallah and his family during the war to New York where he now plies his trade as a cab driver.
In a lovely callback, we hear Sallah sing a few lines from A British Tar, the Gilbert & Sullivan song from HMS Pinafore that he first sang on the dock in Raiders.
“It is wonderful being back, wonderful being in the orbit of that great sun,” Rhys-Davies said.
“Indiana Jones didn’t just change my life—it actually changed the nature of film.”
Marion
Indiana Jones married Karen Allen’s Marion at the end of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and we see a photo of Marion in Indy’s belongings during the 1944 sequence.
However, when we meet Indy again in 1969, he’s going through a divorce keeping Allen’s character on the periphery (but also stuck to the fridge in photo form) right up until the final scene in which she returns to reconcile with her ex-flame.
She’s wearing an embroidered top like the one she wore in Raiders, and they also revisit the “where does it not hurt” moment from that movie in one of Dial of Destiny’s most moving moments.
Mutt Williams
While Shia LaBeouf doesn’t physically appear in Dial of Destiny as Indy and Marion’s son Mutt, his presence — or lack thereof — looms large in the story.
Mutt does make a blink and you’ll miss it appearance via a photo of him in military attire in Indy's apartment, presumably taken after signing up to fight in Vietnam. In a nice touch, his photo is next to one of Indy's father, as played by Sean Connery in The Last Crusade.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in UK cinemas and IMAX now.
Indiana Jones: READ MORE
Thanks to Mark O'Connell for his archaeological Indy knowledge
Watch a trailer below.
