Death is as commonplace in film as green screens and fake facial hair. But in some cases,
there's a lot of confusion surrounding the death of a character. From mysterious
disappearances to off-screen mortalities, these movie deaths were never truly explained.
In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,
Sean Connery didn't return as Professor Henry Jones,
though he'd proven a welcome addition to the Indy franchise in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
"Dad?"
"What?"
"Dad?"
"What?"
"Dad!"
"What?!"
"Head for the fireplace!"
We don't get a lot of information on how Professor Jones died, but Indy confirms it
in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull while looking at a photograph of his father on his desk.
We're apparently meant to assume Henry died of natural causes, but the events of The Last
Crusade beg for a more specific explanation. In the film, the villainous Walter Donovan shoots
Indy's father, leaving the Holy Grail as Henry's only possible salvation. Indy finds the Grail,
heals Henry's wound with it, and has him drink from the cup. Earlier in the movie,
we're told the knights who discovered the Grail were alive 150 years after finding it,
meaning the artifact bestows longer life. Taking one little drink might not grant Henry 150 more
years, but it seems reasonable to assume it'd give him at least a little more time than expected.
Perhaps offscreen he went on another adventure with Indy that he shouldn't have?
Sean Connery's Henry Jones isn't the only elder academic missing from Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Museum curator and Marshall College dean of students Marcus
Brody is missing as well, though the real-world reason for his absence was incredibly tragic.
Denholm Elliott, the actor who played Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade, sadly passed away in 1992 from AIDS-related tuberculosis.
It's never mentioned exactly how Marcus dies in Indy's narrative, but he isn't forgotten
in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. After Marcus' passing, a statue is erected in his honor on the
campus of Marshall College. When Indy and Mutt lead KGB agents on a chase through the campus,
one of the cars crashes into Brody's memorial bust. That's when the head of the statue breaks
off, crashes through the car's windshield, and lands in the lap of one of the KGB agents.
The Autobot known as Sideswipe isn't the most visible Transformer. He makes his first appearance
in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, showing up in Shanghai where he kills the Decepticon
Sideways. Sideswipe returns in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and while he survives the
second film, he's absent in both Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight.
We don't see him killed or hear anything about why he isn't around anymore.
Believe it or not, the minor hero's death is revealed not on the big screen or even in a
behind-the-scenes feature, but on a collectible trading card that reveals he was killed between
movies. Of course, if it's only explained in a trading card set, that means a lot of
viewers who only know him from the movies can imagine Sideswipe is still out there somewhere.
One of the most confusing "non-explanation explanations" for a death comes in the
conclusion to the Star Wars prequels, with 2005's Revenge of the Sith.
While Anakin Skywalker is being turned into a slow-breathing cyborg, his clandestine wife,
Padme Amidala, dies for extremely vague reasons. After giving birth to twins,
Padme appears to be in perfect health. Nevertheless, her life is still slipping
away. So why is she dying? Well, as a medical droid explains to Obi-Wan Kenobi,
"We don't know why. She's lost the will to live."
Even if we forget for a moment that deeming a person to have "lost the will to live"
seems a fairly deep revelation for a Droid, we're left with two sentences that literally
contradict one another. The droid first says it doesn't know why she's dying, then it says why
she's dying. It would be as if it said, "We don't know why she's dying. Also, she was decapitated."
Still, "she lost the will to live" isn't much of an explanation. We can dig deeper
ourselves and theorize that it's because Anakin broke her heart with his betrayal,
so she just didn't want to live anymore. That said,
she also knew she had twin babies on the way, which seems like something worth living for.
So, the real medical explanation for exactly why Padme died might remain a mystery forever.
After the TV series Twin Peaks was canceled, the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with
Me was released in 1992. The film opens on the investigation into the death of Theresa Banks,
conducted by Agent Chet Desmond and his partner Agent Stanley. Their investigation abruptly ends
in the Fat Trout Trailer Park when Agent Desmond discovers the victim's ring under
a trailer. We see him reach for it, and that's it. We never see him again.
It could be that Desmond isn't dead. Instead, he may have been pulled into an otherworldly place
known as the Black Lodge. The original TV series ends when Agent Dale Cooper is imprisoned there,
and in Fire Walk with Me, when Cooper investigates Desmond's disappearance,
he finds the words "Let's Rock" written across the windshield of Desmond's car — a
phrase spoken in the TV series by a Black Lodge resident, the mysterious Man from Another Place.
"Let's rock!"
In spite of the series getting a second lease on life with 2017's Twin Peaks: The Return,
Desmond's fate isn't mentioned. In an AMA Reddit session after the miniseries concluded,
co-creator Mark Frost apologetically told fans that even though the character was discussed,
the showrunners couldn't come up with a way to bring Desmond back, quote, "from wherever he is."
If all you know of Jack Crawford comes from the award-winning 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs,
then you might not think he's a very important character to the franchise. But Crawford is
integral to the Thomas Harris novels that the movies are based upon, and Scott Glenn plays
him to perfection in the first film. However, Crawford fails to appear in the 2001 sequel,
Hannibal. In fact, he isn't mentioned at all in the film's theatrical release. A deleted scene
confirms he died before the film's events, but it doesn't mention how. In the novel Hannibal,
Crawford dies from a heart attack, but this happens during the events of the book, not before.
In 2015, Glenn told The A.V. Club both he and Silence of the Lambs co-star Jodie Foster were
asked to return for Hannibal, but they agreed doing so could, quote, "ruin a good thing," so
both declined. Still, it's unfortunate director Ridley Scott was either unwilling or unable to
recast the role — or at least make some room in the screenplay to explain why Crawford
wasn't around in the theatrical release. Of course, Glenn is now part of a rich tradition
of acclaimed actors playing Jack Crawford. In 2002, Harvey Keitel took the role of Crawford
in the prequel Red Dragon and Laurence Fishburne played him in the acclaimed Hannibal TV series.
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