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Rat

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"Oh, rats!"
―Indiana Jones[src]

The rat is medium-sized, long-tailed rodent that Indiana Jones occasionally encountered on his adventures around the world. His father was scared of rats.[1]

Adventures with rats[]

After the Battle of Verdun, numerous rats infested and ate the corpses left over the trenches.[2]

Rats were aboard on the U-boat Wurrfler as it was transporting the Ark of the Covenant just as they had been on the Bantu Wind,[3] having snuck aboard when the steamer docked in Cairo, Egypt. As they scampered past the crate, they felt suddenly agitated as the crate radiated some kind of powerful danger that made their whiskers tremble.[4]

In 1936, Nazi archaeologist Plebinheim owned a white rat called Tristan.[5]

Rats infested the Venetian catacombs when Indiana Jones and Elsa Schneider journeyed there in 1938 in search of the tomb of Sir Richard,[1] apparently feasting upon an unholy mélange of urban sewage and mummified flesh.[6]

In the same year, S. Spielberg had posted a note on the Barnett College bullentin board, announcing that, among other animals, he had 6000 rats for sale.[7]

Behind the scenes[]

Rats were included in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade due to Indiana Jones creators George Lucas and Steven Spielberg feeling that the franchise's audience demanded a further "phobia scene" for the third film featuring a new creature that people didn't like to be around following the snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark and bugs in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.[8] Effects technicians from the film created 1,000 mechanical rats to accompany the hundreds of real ones they gathered for the Venetian catacombs scenes.[9]

The presence of rats in Last Crusade caused Sexy Beast actress Amanda Redman to turn down playing Elsa Schneider due to her real-life fear of rats.[10] For her part, Alison Doody who took on the role was not intimidated due the filmmakers employing clean and tame rodents, though she admitted that she doesn't care for the animal in general.[11] Harrison Ford also didn't mind their presence as he used to handle lab rats when he was a teenager, getting accustomed to their smell after a while despite the production courting health issues due to the rat faeces on the water, but nobody took ill.[8]

Appearances[]

Sources[]

Notes and references[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  2. ↑ The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles – "Verdun, September 1916" → Demons of Deception
  3. ↑ Raiders of the Lost Ark
  4. ↑ Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark junior novel
  5. ↑ Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients
  6. ↑ The Indiana Jones Handbook
  7. ↑ Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: A Look Inside
  9. ↑ IndianaJones.com The Last Crusade Facts & Trivia on IndianaJones.com (backup link on Archive.org)
  10. ↑ 15 Things You Might Not Know About Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at Mental Floss
  11. ↑ Indiana Jones: The Museum | I Don't Smell a Rat at IndianaJones.com (Web archive)

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