Directors frequently like to reference other films in their movies. Sometime they pay tribute to a great film that influenced them; sometimes they pay tribute to their own favourite work. These references can be artistic, they can be familiar lines of dialogue and they can even be character names. George Lucas is particularly fond of the practice and in the Indiana Jones movies he makes several references to his Star Wars films. They are often subtle so in case you’ve never spotted them here are some of the best Star Wars references to appear in Indiana Jones movies. There are also a few links in terms of personnel and the most obvious is leading man Harrison Ford. In fact Lucas didn’t want to use Ford for Indiana Jones because he thought he would become “that guy I put in all my movies” luckily he was persuaded to change his mind. Lawrence Kasdan was the scriptwriter for Raiders of the Lost Ark and he also wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Julian Glover played General Veers in Empire and he pops up in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as Walter Donovan. In the scene with Indy when Donovan enters the party the piano player briefly plays the Storm Trooper March music. There are a couple of references to Obi Wan Kenobi, the wizened Jedi who starts Luke on his journey in Star Wars. The sea plane at the start of Raiders has OB-CPO painted on the side and the Shanghai club in Temple of Doom is called Club Obi Wan. In the snake filled Well of Souls in Raiders there is vegetation from the set of Dagobah and as Indy and his friend Sallah try to carry the ark out of the chamber you can see hieroglyphs of C-3PO and R2-D2 painted onto the backdrop. Later in the film when Indy threatens to blow up the ark with a bazooka the scene takes place in the same canyon where they filmed R2-D2 being set upon by Jawas. The best R2-D2 reference, which I had never noticed before but now find impossible to ignore, is the inclusion of his rounded head on top of the pole that Indy and Marion are tied to during the finale. In Temple of Doom there are some familiar sound effects. The sound that the Millennium Falcon makes when it fails to start is used here for the plane that struggles into life at the beginning of the film. When the blonde, screaming Willie is trapped inside the cage and about to be plunged into the lava you can hear a lightsaber sound effect. Even in the most recent release, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, Lucas included a few references. In the alien throne room you can once again see C-3PO and R2-D2 carved into the backdrop. He also gives Ford the line “I have a bad feeling about this.” The line was used in all of the Star Wars movies and Han Solo says it in Star Wars.